Bionic Two-Point-O
by Neal Recker
Summary: Years ago, Steve, Jaime, Oscar and Rudy helped make the OSI the most successful spy organization in the world—but that was then. Now it's been reorganized as part of the Department of Homeland Security. The old guard has been shut out, and the OSI's newest agent is left wondering who the good guys really are.
1. The New OSI

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_ This is fan fiction—and an experiment.

If the writing style seems unusual, it's because it has been adapted (with minimal embellishment) from a comic book "spec" script, and I still hope to interest a publisher in having it fully illustrated and printed as a comic. My goal here is to capture the spirit of the comic book as much as possible.

The script is told from multiple points of view, and the primary storyteller wants to remain anonymous—at least, for now. To avoid confusion, the storyteller's narration appears in _**bold italics**_. Feel free to imagine these narrative inserts as captions on a comic book panel.

This will not be confusing at all, I hope.

Of course, it will be helpful if you remember a TV show called _The Six Million Dollar Man._

* * *

 **CHAPTER ONE: The New O.S.I.**

* * *

 _ **Once there was a man named Steve who was a friend to many. He had an adventure to another world which made him famous, but a terrible accident struck him low.  
**_ _ **That was not the end of his story, however. The accident that should have killed him made him stronger because he had a friend named Rudy who knew how to make miracles.**_

 **MARCH 7, 1973  
** **O.S.O. RESEARCH LABORATORY, COLORADO**

The patient had been in a medically induced coma for months. The process was called electrosleep, developed in secret by Soviet scientists. The process was not so secret, however, that the Americans at the Office of Scientific Operations could not duplicate the process.

Dr. Rudy Wells knew many such secrets.

When the patient finally stirred, Jean Manners, the injured man's personal nurse and primary caregiver, spoke in a barely audible whisper.

"He's awake."

The patient's new left eye was bandaged and had yet to be used for the first time. His right eye opened and looked at the face of his doctor, Rudy Wells.

"Dr. Frankenstein, I presume." There was no mirth in his tone.

The words stung Rudy, but he showed no reaction. Jean understood the pain behind the comment and wondered if the friendship between the doctor and his patient would survive what was to come.

It would, of course, but not without being tested many more times in the years that followed—years that would see the most successful, most unexpected, and most classified career of any secret agent in American history.

 _ **That is the beginning of the story of Steve Austin, astronaut**_ — _ **but that was long ago.  
**_ _ **The story I will tell you now is different, but it begins much the same way.**_

 **FORTY-THREE YEARS LATER**

 _ **The boy—who thinks himself already a man—wakes up in a hospital bed. He knows he has survived something horrible.  
**_ _ **He is lucky to be alive.  
**_ _ **He doesn't feel lucky.  
**_ _ **He knows his arms and legs are not his own. They are the only parts of him that do not hurt.  
**_ _ **He does not know where he is or how long he has slept. He does not know who the strangers are who smile at him now.  
**_ _ **Soon he will ask them questions, and they will lie to him. They are good at keeping secrets.**_

 _ **I have no use for secrets. I will tell you what I know, but I must tell you in my own way.  
**_ _ **Be patient. I am not known for my eloquence.  
**_ _ **This happened before I met the boy.**_

"You're awake," said the doctor. "Good. The surgeries went well."

Corp. José Mendez looked with utter bafflement at the people surrounding his bed. This was not Afghanistan.

The man smiling at him was dressed like a doctor, but his face reminded him of a sensei from an old Kung foo movie. His lab coat bore an embroidered logo for Darkwell Defense Systems and a name tag that said "Endo."

"I advise you to start slowly," said Dr. Endo. "Your bionics will respond as though they are a part of you, but your brain will take time to adapt to the new neural pathways."

José looked at the others surrounding him.

There were two nurses smiling affectionately at him. They were hard to miss because they were strikingly (suspiciously) beautiful. He knew they were nurses because of their uniforms, although their skirts were shorter than those of any nurse's uniforms he had ever seen outside of a certain genre of movie.

Then there was the young woman standing at the foot of the bed reading his chart—the only woman not making direct eye contact with him. Her dark hair was curled just the right way. Her Darkwell-issued lab coat covered most of her outfit, but through the open front, he saw something that looked like a short leather kimono with zippers in odd places. It was a dress that could have been designed by a James Bond villain.

José knew what army hospitals usually looked like, so he thought it was odd that the scene before him looked as if Charlie's Angels had gone undercover as a medical team.

The thought was driven from his mind as the dark-haired woman noticed him staring. She grinned suddenly as if remembering her part in the script.

José started with the obvious question.

"Where am I?"

The nurses' smiles wavered a bit, but it was Dr. Endo who replied.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Jallalabad," said José. That was as specific as his hazy memory could manage.

"Afghanistan," said the dark-haired kimono woman whose name tag said "Goodwin."

"I know where it is, Dr. Goodwin," admonished Endo before turning his attention back to José. "Memory loss is not uncommon in cases of head trauma such as yours. To answer your question, you're in Colorado. You've been here nearly two years, although you spent most of that time in electrosleep."

José heard the words, but the information didn't sink in. "What happened to the others?" he asked.

"The men in your unit are fine," said Endo. "How do you feel?"

He was aware of bandages covering the right side of his head including his eye. Much of the rest of his body felt like it belonged to someone else.

"There's a buzzing in my ear."

"You probably hear the humming of the equipment in the room, or the flickering of the lights. Even through your bandages, your new ear can hear things most people can't."

"New ear?"

"It'll take a day or two to get used to."

The dark-haired Dr. Goodwin spoke up. "If the ear still bothers you tomorrow, I'll make some adjustments."

"Look at your hand," said Endo. "Either hand."

He flexed his right hand experimentally as the doctors watched. "It feels—different."

"It's artificial—but it responds to your brain waves, your thoughts, as if it were your real hand."

"Artificial?" He studied his hands now with skepticism. He could make them move, but only in a sluggish, clumsy way.

"Your new hands are much better than the ones you were born with," said Endo with some pride. "Better. Faster. Stronger. You're a lucky man."

The dark-haired woman broke eye contact, staring uncomfortably at her chart.

"Doctor, how lucky am I?" he asked, his hands clenched into fists. "How much of me is left?"

"You were very badly hurt when you arrived, Mr. Mendez, but your service has earned you some very special gifts. We've upgraded your arms, your legs, your right ear, and your right eye."

The dark-haired woman glanced up reassuringly. The others smiled proudly as though José had just won the lottery.

"Congratulations!" said Endo.

"Something tells me I'm not at the V.A."

He sat up—to see if he could. The nurses rushed to help, but Dr. Endo motioned for them to hold back. Everything he did from now on would be a test.

They brought him a can of soda on a tray. They knew his favorite cola brand.

"Pick it up," said Dr. Endo.

He reached for the can. Slowly.

"It is a familiar task," said Endo, "so your brain retains the muscle memory, and the software in your arm translates that memory into action."

His hand found the can and applied gentle pressure to the sides. To his surprise, it felt cold.

"Well done!" said Endo as the nurses clapped. "With contemporary methods, this simple task would have taken you weeks to relearn, but our advances in brain mapping has made the recovery time much shorter."

The can burst under the pressure from his hand. Soda streamed over the bed and the floor. The nearest nurse reached for a towel.

"Jessie?" said Endo.

The dark-haired Dr. Jessie Goodwin responded, "I'll adjust the pressure sensors in his fingertips."

"That'd be great, thanks," said José. "Preferably before I use the bathroom."

Dr. Endo smiled encouragingly. "This is just the first step, of course. We'll make adjustments to your bionics as we go, but the progress you've already made is very promising."

"I'm still confused," said José. "All the attention I'm getting is great, but I didn't know this was possible. Lots of people in the Army have been hurt like me, but they don't get this kind of care."

"But you're not in the Army anymore," said Endo. "You're part of the OSI now, as per your agreement. You really don't remember?"

José really didn't.

"You mustn't worry about that now. It will all be explained later, when you meet with Mr. Spencer."

It was only the first day of his long recovery. At first, it was a struggle to relearn simple tasks like dressing himself, feeding himself, or even standing for himself. The tasks were all-consuming, driving from his mind the suspicions he'd had about the seemingly perfect people who instructed him.

 _ **They are very helpful, these people. The boy is too proud to ask for help, but he accepts it.  
**_ _ **What choice does he have?**_

 **THE NEXT DAY**

"There will be some disorientation as your bionic eye calibrates to your organic one," said Endo as he removed the final bandage from José's face. "This should take only a moment."

José opened his right eye for the first time, but his left refused to cooperate as two disparate images competed for the attention of his brain's visual cortex. Both images showed the same room but disagreed on sizes, shades and colors.

Then the image in his new eye zoomed to match the other one. Hues and contrasts auto-adjusted like TV settings, using his original eye as a reference for how the other image should appear.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" asked Endo.

"Four. "

"Do you see color? Depth?"

"I see normally. It works like my own eye."

"Let's put it to the test. Read the eye chart."

José looked around Endo's sparse office. The dominant feature was a window facing the mountains, but there was no eye chart in the room.

"There isn't one."

Endo pointed toward the window. "Look again."

There were more than mountains in that view. There was the OSI administration building, the parking garage, the staff's dormitories, and the outdoor running track which was currently covered in a thin layer of snow. On the far side of the track, José recognized the two nurses—whose names he now knew to be Amber and April—wearing adorable white snow pants and mini-parkas while posing alongside an eye chart on an easel.

The pair waved happily at him.

"It's Amber and April. But they're too far away. I can't read that."

"Close your left eye. Look harder."

He did. Suddenly the image from his eye zoomed so tightly he could count the teeth in the nurses' smiles. An unexpected array of graphics appeared over the top of the image quantifying the visual data he received—including the exact magnification of what he saw and the filters currently in use. At the bottom of his field of vision, symbols appeared offering other options he may wish to use.

"What are these icons?"

"Enhancements for infrared, ultraviolet, and other other uses."

"What, no x-rays?"

"Close your eye and focus on an icon—any one—then open again."

A Google start-up page appeared across José's field of vision.

"Internet?"

"That didn't take you long to find. Yes, your eye gives you some of the benefits of connectivity—text messaging, search engines, Skype. But I suggest you pace yourself."

"What about—?"

"Blocked. You have enough distractions."

 **A WEEK LATER**

It wasn't easy for José to remaster the simple art of walking, but when he had, he was able to make the long trek with Dr. Endo to the administration building next door where he was introduced to Elijah Spencer, director of the OSI.

"It's good to see you again, Mr. Mendez," said Spencer, reaching for José's hand.

"Shaking my hand?" asked José, remembering the soda can. "You're a brave man, sir."

Spencer laughed, revealing perfect teeth. His handsome middle-aged features and well-tailored suit marked him as a career politician.

"Yes, I heard that your sense of humor had come back. You're in much better spirits than the last time we met."

"He's made amazing progress, Eli," said Endo.

José didn't agree. The walk had tired him, and he was glad when Spencer offered him a chair. "I'm grateful for what you're doing for me, sir, but I'm afraid I don't remember you at all."

"Yes, I know you've suffered memory loss." Spencer leaned back on the front of his desk. "I hope I'll be able to shed some light on why we're so interested in you."

"Am I a spy now or something?"

Spencer and Endo looked at each other quizzically.

"Spy?" asked Spencer.

"Well, I assumed," said José. "We're in the OSI—the Office of Scientific Intelligence."

"The 'I' stands for 'Intervention' now," corrected Spencer. "Part of our post-9/11 reorganization."

"The OSI has a reputation for being the spooky dark corner of the Department of Homeland Security," José continued. "They say you even make the National Security Bureau nervous."

"You shouldn't believe those rumors."

"You've given me super strength, and you're loading my head with surveillance tech. If you're not building a spy, then what?"

Spencer sighed heavily. "Okay. Okay, yes," he admitted. "Spying is part of what we do."

"It's not that I'm ungrateful. But I have two big questions which I can't quite get my head around. Why pick me? Spying wasn't something I ever aspired to do. And why did I agree to do it?"

"Why?" Spencer's tone became more serious. "The reason we picked you is obvious. You fit the profile. We know your grades, your SAT score, your stats as a high school track star and all-around athlete, and your outstanding combat record. You're the best candidate we found, and we needed you. As for why you accepted . . .

"Well, let's just say—in your case—memory loss is a blessing. Do you really want the details?"

José stared at him expectantly.

"The IED that hit you turned the pieces of the Humvee you were driving into shrapnel which tore through your arms, your legs, and your skull. One fragment sliced your right eye down the middle. Afterwards, the combat-hardened men of your unit had difficulty describing the details of how they pulled the pieces of you out of that wreck. It was gut-wrenching.

"When you woke up in the hospital and saw what had happened, you cried for days. By the time we found you, you were begging the doctors to let you die." Spencer pointed at José. "You don't remember **that** , do you?

"Well, I don't blame you. A man like you, an athlete, a man who prides himself on self-reliance—that's the kind of man who loses the **most** after an injury like that.

"We found a man with limitless potential wallowing in self-pity—but a man who could **meet** his potential with the right kind of help."

The man with perfect teeth leaned toward José.

"So we rebuilt you. We had the technology. We had the capability to make the world's first bionic man. You, José Mendez, are that man."

 _ **It was a good speech. It wasn't his, but he told it well.  
**_ _ **The boy believed him.**_

"Walk with me, José." Spencer stood up and led the way to the door. "I'm going to show you where your bionics were designed."

The Bionics Lab was a sprawling room where technicians peered at screens and soldered together high-tech gadgets for revealing secrets.

On the far end was a soundproof room for audio testing, and it was visible through a large window. Dr. Jessie Goodwin could be seen exiting the room carrying what appeared to be a plastic head. She kept her lab coat buttoned up here in the lab, surrounded by her mostly male co-workers.

Closer to the entrance was a device resembling a headless mannequin with robotic arms and legs—the "bionic simulator." Its feet didn't quite reach the ground because its back was mounted on a steel pole that extended from floor to ceiling. One of the simulator's hands grasped a barbell loaded with weights. The other hand was raised in an imitation of an "OK" gesture.

Every part of the lab could be seen from the landing where José, Spencer and Endo now stood.

"Gentlemen . . . and Jessie," announced Mr. Spencer. "We have a special guest—José Mendez."

The technicians in the room applauded José's arrival as if he were a celebrity.

"You'll forgive their enthusiasm." Spencer led José down a short flight of stairs as he spoke. "They're very proud of their work. You represent the fulfillment of years of their labor, and it's a huge relief for them to see you doing so well.

"You've already guessed this, but let me spell it out. After you've fully recovered and have been trained—we'll be sending you into the field on missions for the government. But you won't be out there alone. This is your support team."

They approached Jessie's work station near the bionic simulator. Jessie put down the plastic head and slipped her hand into a kind of bionic glove covered in wires that operated the robotic hand on the simulator.

Spencer continued. "Jessie, who you already know, is in charge of making sure your bionics interact seamlessly with your human parts."

"Good morning, José." Jessie waved at him, and the simulator mimicked her. "Welcome to our hidden lair."

She turned her attention to the simulator. "You see the robotic arms. They're exact replicas of **your** arms, but with the skin removed, in case we need to troubleshoot problems with your bionics when you're in the field."

She picked up the head which, up close, looked like a red plastic skull with ears. "I was just running a simulation with your bionic ear. I use this mock-up of your head to simulate the resonance of your skull."

"I was just going to say that," said José, nodding. "Yeah."

"And don't forget this," said Jessie, unexpectedly picking up a bionic eyeball from her workbench. "It's an exact match for the one we put in your head. Come here."

She put an arm around José and held out the eyeball like a camera. "Selfie!" she said with a smile. One of the screens surrounding her workstation captured the image of José and herself.

Spencer put a hand on José's shoulder and led him to the exit. "These people are going to be your new best friends," he said. "Your pit crew, so to speak. If you run into trouble, it'll be their job to get you out of it. Now come with me, and I'll tell you about some of the other benefits of working with us."

José glanced back to see one of those benefits in action. Jessie unbuttoned her coat.

Dr. Endo stayed in the lab and watched José and Spencer leave. The soundproof door closed behind them.

"They're gone," said Endo. "Get back to work!"

"Yeah, yeah," muttered Jessie under her breath as everyone in the room abruptly stopped smiling and returned to their drab screens.

"You sound grouchy," said the technician at the adjacent workstation.

Jessie carefully propped the bionic eye between the thumb and forefinger of the simulator's upraised robotic hand. "This sucks," she complained. "The poor kid's been through a lot already, and we're keeping him in the dark."

"You took the job," reminded her coworker.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I remember."

 **EIGHT MONTHS AGO:  
** **DR. JESSIE GOODWIN'S FIRST DAY**

"You're concerned about the uniform?" Dr. Endo sat at his desk. His tone, as usual, was irritated.

"Yes, doctor." Jessie had removed her lab coat so her boss could see the problem. Her short form-fitting nurse's uniform was identical to those worn by Amber and April. "The skirt isn't regulation. It's too short. And nowadays nurses don't wear skirts. They wear scrubs. And I'm a doctor, not a nurse— _ **so what the hell?"**_

Dr. Endo regarded Jessie as he would a problem child. "We talked about this, Jessie. We all have to play our roles. This is an able-bodied young man who's had his self-sufficiency suddenly torn away from him. His confidence, his sense of manhood, has been shattered. Our job is to build him back up, not just physically, but mentally.

"The moment when the patient awakes—when he finally possesses his new arms and legs but is not able to use them—that is when he will be the most fragile psychologically. That is when it will be most important to protect him from his unpleasant reality. That's when it will be most important to play our parts.

"My role is that of the protective father-figure. I take care of his medical needs and provide sage advice, because it's vital that the patient trust me.

"You, on the other hand . . . Well, you're a beautiful young woman. The right kind of attention from someone like you can give the patient confidence—and something to aspire to."

"Wait, wait," interrupted Jessie, clenching the lab coat in her fist. "It almost sounds like I was hired to . . . I don't know how to say this . . . to excite him?"

"It's not as though we hired you **just** for your looks," said Endo.

"I was top of my class!"

"If you weren't, you wouldn't be here." Endo thought this answer explained everything more than satisfactorily. "Our methods **have** to be unconventional. And you're well compensated to play your part in it."

Jessie put on her lab coat before she stormed out of the room. "The patient under my care will get the attention he needs, but I **draw the line** at sexy nurse outfits!"

Dr. Endo relented. "Fine, fine. We'll design a **doctor's** uniform for you."

 **NOW**

Dr. Jessie Goodwin sighed as heavily as the seams in her custom-fitted uniform would allow. She stared at the plastic skull in her hand.

"I thought this job would be a chance to work with a genius. Does Dr. Endo seem like a genius to you?"

Unblinkingly, the skull said nothing.

"I don't know," said her coworker from the next workstation. "He's paying me six times what I could make anywhere else, so I'm not going to ask."

 **NEARBY**

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Spencer asked rhetorically. "The OSI built this complex back in the seventies. We were the 'OSO' back then."

Spencer was giving José the tour of the campus. Trees and grassy spaces between melting snowdrifts offset a spectacular view of the Rocky Mountains.

"A lot has changed. This complex belongs to Darkwell Defense Systems now, a private contractor, but the work is still for the OSI—and still highly classified."

Spencer led the way into the living complex. A receptionist smiled at them as they walked through the lobby into the elevator.

"We've given you a Security 6 clearance," he continued. "We've taken precautions to keep our work away from prying eyes."

"Like rival companies?" asked José.

"And rival nations. The Russians and the Chinese would love to see what we do here."

The elevator doors opened into a hallway. José was so impressed he didn't think to ask where they were going.

"This building is part of our on-site living area. It allows our busiest employees to avoid a lengthy commute if they choose." Spencer unlocked a door and beckoned José to go first.

He entered a lavish apartment. There was a fireplace, an entertainment center, a balcony overlooking the mountains, and a workout area with free weights and a gigantic punching bag.

"Here we are," said Spencer. "Home, sweet home."

"You live here?" asked José.

"No. You do."

" **SURPRISE!"** shouted Amber, April, and various other hidden well-wishers who suddenly revealed themselves. Amber arose from behind a sofa carrying a tray of champagne-filled glasses for everyone.

"Your friends have taken the liberty of moving your things over," Spencer explained. "You don't belong in a hospital anymore. Not with the progress you've made."

Offered champagne, José hesitated before taking it, remembering the soda can a week ago. With all eyes upon him, he picked it up. It did not break.

"Here you'll have room to flex your new bionic muscles," Spencer continued, gesturing toward the swanky new workout area, "and our staff will be able to make house calls as needed to check on your progress."

José felt overwhelmed by the attention. He nearly spilled his champagne when April unexpectedly hugged him from behind. "We're going to be neighbors!" she squealed in his ear. "Isn't that exciting?"

"I don't know what to say. This is too much!"

Spencer noticed with satisfaction his surprised reaction. "You can live here as long as you like," said Spencer, "or at least, until you find a place you like better."

 **LATER**

Over the next few weeks, José's training accelerated. With April and Amber as his new workout buddies, he learned to develop the muscles in his core to keep up with his new bionic limbs.

He learned to vault forty feet in the air without the benefit of a pole.

He learned to lap the running track with the speed of a race car.

He learned to lift an 800-pound barbell over his head with one hand.

He learned all these things and more, and to him, it began to feel natural.

 _ **For the boy, it seems the tide has turned.  
**_ _ **The frustrations felt upon his arrival are gradually forgotten as helplessness gives way to empowerment.  
**_ _ **It is a heady experience to suddenly realize you have power no one else has.  
**_ _ **As you continue to explore your limits, you begin to think that you don't HAVE any.  
**_ _ **You begin to feel as though fear is something for other people.**_

 **WEEKS LATER**

After his daily workout, José stepped onto the balcony of his suite to admire the sunset. The grounds of the complex were turning green again, but the mountaintops were still covered in snow.

Amber and April followed him out wearing spandex workout gear, mopping their brows with their towels.

They were sweating. He wasn't, and rarely did anymore.

The nurses were beautiful, and both seemed to adore him—April a little more than Amber. She thought he didn't notice, but he did.

As the two women joined him to admire the view from the balcony, José noticed someone in the parking lot. His bionic eye zoomed to see Dr. Goodwin as she walked to her car.

"I wonder where Jessie's going," he asked. He had forgotten Amber and April didn't have bionic vision like his own.

"Dr. Goodwin?" asked April. "Home, probably. She lives off complex."

 _ **It becomes hard to remember the power was not always yours.  
**_ _ **Such power always comes at a price.**_

 **THE NEXT DAY**

Spencer led José onto the running track where a stern thick-necked man dressed in black stood waiting.

"José, meet Wade Kirkland, one of our top operatives at the OSI. He'll be training you in the methods you'll need to survive when you're out in the field."

Kirkland's boots, cargo pants, shirt and cap were of a uniform shade of black. Everything about his appearance and demeanor said mercenary.

José shook his hand.

"You've got a firm grip," said the man in black.

"Just firm enough, I hope."

"Kirkland's faced his share of enemies," said Spencer, "both here and abroad. He'll give you the benefit of his experience, and probably make your life miserable as he does it."

"Part of the job," said Kirkland. "You'll thank me when it saves your life."

Kirkland led José to a mat lying on the grass. "I'll start with some ju jitsu. Show you some moves."

"Okay, but I warn you, I can kick pretty hard."

Without warning, Kirkland's booted foot landed hard against José's face.

 **THWAK!**

José was on the ground before he knew what had hit him.

"Yeah, but your reflexes suck," said the instructor. "Your weak points are your face, your neck and your groin, just like anyone else. If you don't protect those, your bionics are useless."

In the weeks that followed, José rediscovered his humility.

José ran sprints that would shame an Olympic athlete, but Kirkland was not impressed.

"Bullets are faster, ya pansy! I'll tell you when it's good!"

 _ **The boy was a soldier.**_

José learned secrets that gave him advantages in hand-to-hand combat.

"Feel that?" Kirkland held José's hand against his throat. "It's the carotid artery. Block it, and he loses consciousness. Sever it, and he's done."

 _ **Killing to protect his homeland is a concept he understands.**_

Kirkland grabbed the head of the tackle dummy from behind. "Make it a quick snap. You don't want him crying out when you're in stealth mode."

José hesitated. "This'll knock him out?"

"Take," repeated Kirkland. "I said 'take' him out."

 _ **But this training feels different.**_

José kicked so hard, the tackle dummy's head flew off.

"Sorry about that."

"Ha! Don't worry, kid." Chuckling with satisfaction, Kirkland picked up the wooden head and tossed it to him. "There are always more dummies. Let's call it a day. The doctor's waiting to take your diagnostic."

José looked up to find Jessie on the edge of the track (again in her lab coat) waiting for José. She had brought her small cart filled with medical equipment and her laptop.

This was José's favorite part of the day.

"How's it going?" asked Jessie.

"My trainer's really good at killing people," José observed. "Not sure how to feel about that."

"He's got his job to do. I've got mine." Jessie took his arm and attached an electrode to monitor his bionics. Her laptop screen came to life with all the relevant data.

She placed her hand on the side of his neck to take his pulse.

Carotid artery, he thought. Sever it, and he's done.

"You looked good out there," complimented Jessie. "Any muscle pain?"

"With all the lifting I've been doing, my back should be killing me, but I feel fine."

"That's because Dr. Endo rebuilt your back using classified muscle grafting techniques."

"Grafting? That explains a lot."

"Dr. Endo didn't tell you? He's your surgeon." Jessie turned her laptop around so José could see his own medical information—something she had never done before.

José didn't have the training to understand most of it. There was a long list of pre-op and post-op medications including words like ferroxadrine, xenotestosterine, and oxitachidrine.

"Your bionic parts have been complimented by a battery of supplements you received while in electrosleep to fortify your muscular and skeletal systems," she explained. "Most of it's classified. Let's just say you've got a little more titanium in your spine than most people have."

"That's quite a list. What's 'ferroxadrine?'"

She hesitated before answering. "Part of Endo's secret recipe, I expect. To be honest, I don't know what it does, but I can look it up."

"That's okay. I only asked to break up our routine."

"Routine. Right." Jessie sighed and twirled her hair a bit nervously. "Listen, it's not like you're still bedridden. You should get off the complex now and then." She removed the electrodes from his arm and packed up her laptop. "In fact, there's a new restaurant in town that I've been wanting to visit. If you're interested, I'd let you take me there."

José thought he must have misheard. "You mean like dinner?"

"Yeah, dinner. To break the routine. "

"You mean a date?"

She gave him an authoritative glare that made him feel like an idiot. "You don't have to sound so surprised."

"A date sounds awesome."

"Tomorrow night, then? Around six?"

"Six o'clock," he blurted. "I'll pick you up."

As they left the running track in opposite directions, José tried to figure out what had just happened.

"I have a date with a hot doctor. I wonder if I have a car."

 **O'FLAHERTY'S RESTAURANT  
** **THE FOLLOWING EVENING**

He wore a tie. She wore a black dress with a shawl. The valet driver was suitably impressed by the Audi. The table was perfectly lit by candles.

José thought he did everything right.

"This is the first beer I've had since the surgery," he said when their drinks arrived.

"Pace yourself," she warned. "Your body's half metal now, so you can't metabolize alcohol like before."

The food was delicious, but Jessie didn't seem hungry.

"How's your salad?" he asked.

"I like it," she muttered. "It's got mushrooms."

They ate. José worried. He did most of the talking.

"So my top speed is 88 miles an hour. That's good right?"

"Impressive."

"Eighty-eight. With a flux capacitor, I'd be a time machine."

José finished his steak, but Jessie still poked at her salad. He wondered what bothered her but was afraid she was just bored.

"This was a good idea you had," he said, lifting the last of his drink. "I'm glad we're spending some down time together."

"Asking you out doesn't mean I want to have sex with you."

José didn't spit beer, but came close.

Jessie added quickly, "I didn't just say that. That was weird, wasn't it?"

"I didn't say anything about sex," said José.

"You misheard me."

"Okay. But, bionic ear."

"I don't date much. I'm bad at this."

"I'm not trying to have sex with you."

She glared.

"Not that I wouldn't want to. I mean—"

She looked back at her food with renewed vigor. "Did I tell you about my salad? It has mushrooms."

The fork in her hand trembled.

José recognized the symptoms but doubted his own judgment. His date, Dr. Jessie Goodwin, the woman he had admired throughout his recovery—who was so beautiful, so authoritative, so confident—was having a panic attack.

He reached across the table to hold her hand. "Relax, Jessie. Take a deep breath."

Their eyes met. She took a breath. So did he.

"The reason I'm glad we're doing this," said José slowly, "is because I trust you. Since this whole thing started, it's been hard to know who to trust. And I feel like I can trust you."

Their eyes remained locked.

"José, that's sweet," she said. "I don't know what to say."

She withdrew her hand, returning her attention to the salad. "Thank you. I'm . . . I'm glad you trust me."

José thought she might be talking to her fork. She made no eye contact for the rest of the meal.

Outside, the sky began to dim. Young people walked along the street enjoying the scenery and each other's company. In front of the restaurant, José and Jessie waited for the valet driver to bring back the car.

"We just missed the sunset," said José.

A bald man with a leather coat and a goatee emerged from the crowd and snatched Jessie's purse from her. It happened so suddenly, the thief was halfway down the block before José realized what had happened.

"He took my purse!" she said. "I can't believe he took my purse!"

 _ **It is a moment he has prepared for**_ — _ **although he didn't expect it this soon.**_

"It's okay," he told her with an easy smile. "I've got this."

José quickly dashed down the block after the man—but not so quickly that he would attract attention. The thief rounded a corner into an alley between the restaurant and a warehouse.

The alley was a dead end, empty except for a dumpster. The warehouse on the left was three stories tall with no windows or doors facing the alley, but an access ladder mounted on the wall led to its roof. José spotted the thief climbing the ladder and scuttling over the top.

"He's quick," observed José, sprinting to the base of the ladder. "But so am I."

 _ **He should be more suspicious than he is.**_

Beyond the view of passersby, José bent at the knees, engaging powerful motors in his joints fueled by the most efficient atomic batteries known to man. The components in his legs propelled José thirty feet into the air onto the very rung for which he had aimed, eight feet short of the top of the ladder.

José looked up and was surprised again. The purse snatcher, instead of running, was scowling angrily back down at him from the rooftop. The thief grabbed the ladder's metal rails as if to push the whole thing away from the wall with José still on the lower rungs.

The thief's maneuver was foolish, even desperate. He couldn't be strong enough to tear the ladder loose.

Yet somehow he was. José felt the mounting brackets give way, and the entire ladder shook.

José was surprised again. Instead of pushing, the thief pulled—jerking the ladder abruptly, impossibly upward.

The thief's strength was herculean. Hand over hand, the thief pulled the ladder up the side of the building, halting only when José was at eye level with him. The thief angrily glared between the rungs at José who dangled precariously over the alley three stories below.

"You're not a purse snatcher, are you?"

 _To be continued . . ._

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:**_ _The storyteller's identity revealed._


	2. Field Work

**CHAPTER TWO: FIELD WORK**

 _ **Once there was a place called OSI where miracles happened.**_

 **FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO**

The smashed, burning car lay overturned in the ravine, and the woman watched in horror. Her six-year-old son was trapped inside.

The child would have died had it not been for the unexpected arrival of a hero who braved the flames to pull him out.

The mother should have thanked the stranger. Instead, she recoiled in fear when she saw the gash in the stranger's arm and the electronic components the wound revealed.

"What are you?" she gasped.

 _ **Miracles do not always make people happy.**_

Later that day, Steve Austin leaned against the examination table, remembering the question the terrified woman had asked him. He still didn't know the answer.

Oliver Spencer, director of the Office of Scientific Operations, tried to comfort him but didn't know how. Human emotions baffled Steve's boss. His human resources department normally dealt with these uncomfortable issues for him.

"I'll get Miss Manners in here," said Oliver.

"I want her replaced," said Steve. "I don't want a permanent nurse again. It gets too personal."

 _ **Human emotions are difficult to understand—especially by those who experience them.**_

"We'd better sort this out, Steve," said Jean Manners who'd overheard everything.

She had been with him through every step of his recovery. She had listened to all of his doubts. She had even witnessed his rescue of the little boy. She knew that he felt like less than a man.

But to her, he was so much more.

"We're not talking about a nurse assigned to a case," she said. "We're talking about a man—and a woman—and feelings."

Their eyes met.

"I'm in love with you," she confessed.

 _ **The fact is, love is simple. It is humans who are complicated.**_

 **TWO DAYS AGO**

"We're pleased with the progress you're making with Mr. Mendez," said Eli Spencer, director of the new Office of Scientific Intervention. "He's making exceptional progress."

He was complimenting Dr. Jessie Goodwin, the young doctor in charge of José's recovery, who sat across from him. José's surgeon, Dr. Endo, was also there.

"Thank you," said Jessie. "José deserves the credit. I think he could move even faster if we step up his physical training."

"We want you to ask him out," said Eli Spencer. "On a date."

Jessie knew this job was unlike any other, but she was not prepared for this.

"Look," she said, gathering her thoughts. "I've heard Dr. Endo's speech about how we have to build up his confidence—restore his faith in his 'manhood' so to speak. And I know that you and Dr. Endo would like to set him up with someone on the recovery team—"

"We put two buxom nurses on his team, and he's not responding to them," said Spencer. "He's responding to you. For some reason, he likes the brainy type."

Endo agreed. "Jessie, we need you to do this."

For a moment, Jessie buried her face in her hand. She knew they had no right to ask this of her, but she didn't know how to refuse. She had already compromised her principles for this job.

She looked up, her face a mixture of incredulity and surrender.

"A date?"

 **TWENTY-ONE MINUTES AGO**

In a darkened room, a pair of computer screens glowed, one of which showed a live image of Dr. Jessie Goodwin in a fashionable restaurant, eating.

"How's your salad?" said the voice of José Mendez, the unwitting videographer. The live image of the beautiful doctor streamed directly from his bionic eye to the darkened room in real time.

"I like it," said Jessie. "It's got mushrooms."

A small group of important men watched the image of the young woman from comfortable chairs in the darkened room—known to them as the War Room.

"So my top speed is 88 miles an hour," said the voice of José. "That's good right?"

"Impressive."

"Eighty-eight. With a flux capacitor, I'd be a time machine."

"What the hell's he talking about?" asked the OSI director.

"It's a film reference," explained Endo. " _Back to the Future_."

"I'm glad we're spending some down time together," said José.

"Asking you out doesn't mean I want to have sex with you."

Spencer snapped. "For crying out **loud!** "

"I said we should use someone more experienced like April," said Endo.

"I don't trust April," insisted Spencer. "We needed Jessie. She's . . . sincere."

The woman on the screen was apologizing. "I don't date much. I'm bad at this."

"I'm not trying to have sex with you," said José.

"Is he gay?" asked Agent Wade Kirkland from the back. "He signed up under Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, didn't he?"

"He's not gay," said Endo. "See? His eye is focused on her—"

"Good! He's just a moron!" said Spencer.

The woman on the screen calmed down. The meal ended without further incident. José paid the check and followed his date out.

"They're outside the restaurant," said Spencer. "Send in the robot."

"Deploy the robot," said a technician into a headset. "Deploy. Deploy."

The other screen came to life with an image streamed from the robot. Its hand was briefly visible as it grabbed Jessie's purse. The image moved quickly through crowds of people as it fled the scene.

"He took my purse!" She turned toward José. "I can't believe he took my purse!"

Spencer jumped out of his chair. "Why are you standing there, you idiot? _Go be a_ _ **hero!**_ "

José ran down the block after the thief and turned the corner into the alley.

Seeing the thief climbing onto the roof, José leapt thirty feet into the air and landed on a rung near the top.

The thief turned around, grabbed the top of the ladder, and pulled. The entire ladder was wrenched upward with José on it.

When José reached eye level, he got another close-up of the thief's face. Hairless except for a goatee, the thief sneered at him pitilessly.

"You're not a purse snatcher, are you?" said José.

 **NOW**

José punched the thief hard on the jaw through the rungs of the ladder.

Spencer shouted at the screen, "Solid hit!"

By the time the punch landed, however, the thief had let go. The thief was momentarily staggered while the ladder—with José on it—abruptly dropped six feet (as far as it could go before hitting the pavement three stories below), and started to tip backward.

"He almost knocked the face plate off," said Spencer.

"No," said Endo who hated being reminded about the robots' face plate issues. "The robot let go of the ladder, so the impact was lessened."

José looked behind him, saw that the falling ladder was tipping him onto the roof of the adjacent restaurant, and leapt clear.

 _ **KLANG!**_

The ladder struck the top of the restaurant a moment after José did. Luckily he landed with his feet on a flat section of the roof.

"He used the ladder to control his landing," approved Spencer.

"We fixed that face plate problem years ago," reminded Endo.

"But how does he get back to the other roof?" Spencer wondered. "He can't jump that far."

José looked at the other building and estimated the distance. Then he picked up the detached ladder and began to run with it.

"He's pole vaulting!"

But he wasn't. Instead, he threw the heavy ladder like a javelin. It landed with one end on the other roof.

"He's created a makeshift footbridge," said Endo. "He's not foolish enough to take unnecessary chances."

Scrambling across the span, José accelerated as much as the fragile ladder would allow, but he could not be certain what he would find on the other side.

"When he reaches the top, he'll have good momentum," Endo observed.

Clearing the roof, José found the thief waiting for him and aimed his kick for the thief's jaw. The thief grabbed his leg and used José's momentum to swing him toward the opposite side of the factory's roof.

"Uh oh."

José tumbled painfully and collided with the low wall at the roof's edge, making the observers in the darkened room wince in unison. _"Ooooooooo."_

"He smacked his head," said Spencer.

"But he partially broke his fall with his hand," said Endo.

The spectators now had two perspectives of the fight displayed on their screens—one from José's eye and one from the robot. José's view showed the robot uprooting a 10-foot-tall metal smokestack to use as a club.

"Your robots have improved, Doctor."

"I just gave this one a little more attitude."

José tore loose a 5-foot section of 12-inch-diameter pipe to use as a weapon.

"That won't work. It's too cumbersome."

Each combatant charged the other with their improvised weapons. The thief raised his smokestack to use as a pike aimed at José's chest. José swung his pipe beneath his opponent's weapon and let go.

"He's using it as a projectile!"

José sidestepped the thief's pike as the jagged edge of the projectile hit the thief in the leg.

 _ **KRAK!**_

José's eye zoomed in on the sparks bursting from the torn pant leg. A gash in the thief's shin revealed exposed electronics.

"It's damaged!" said Spencer. "End the test! Now!"

José grabbed the thief angrily by the jacket, ready to pummel him. "What **is** all this?" he demanded. "Who **sent** you?"

The thief narrowed his eyes and held a fist under José's face. Unseen nozzles between his knuckles sprayed mace in José's vulnerable left eye.

"Won't mace damage him?" Spencer wondered.

"No," assured Endo.

José let go. The thief leaped off the edge of the building like a monkey, leaving Jessie's purse a few feet away from where José knelt with his face in his hands.

"Not that it would matter," said Endo. "We can make more eyes."

 **O'FLAHERTY'S RESTAURANT**

 **7:26 P.M.**

José found his way back to street level. His best clothes were ruined and his left eye was red and puffy. "I saved your purse," he said in a pale imitation of triumph.

"José! What happened?" She ran to him and tried to examine his face for injury, but he looked away in embarrassment.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I may be the world's first bionic man, but it seems the second one has already turned to a life of crime."

"We should call the police."

"I already called Spencer on my cell phone. He said the police shouldn't be involved, and I agree. Let's just get out of here."

"I'll drive."

 **DR. JESSIE GOODWIN'S APARTMENT**

 **8:44 P.M.**

José sat in Jessie's kitchen with a towel over his shirt. The eye washing Jessie had given him took away much of the stinging, and now she examined his eye with a pen light.

"How does it feel?"

"Good,"

"Liar." Jessie turned off the pen light. "The effects shouldn't be permanent, but I want to look at it again in the morning to be safe."

"You're the doctor."

She walked to her refrigerator. "Can I get you something? Water? Iced tea?"

"I should go." As dates were concerned, José knew this had been a disaster.

Jessie felt responsible. "I didn't thank you."

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"No, no, you're not. What you did tonight was brave."

"Whatever I did, it wasn't brave. It was just . . . weird." José walked toward her door. "I really should go. Spencer wants to see me first thing tomorrow."

Jessie followed him to the door as he opened it. "Tell me what he says. Unless, you know, it's classified or something."

"He owes me an explanation," said José. "A good one."

José stepped into the hall, but Jessie stopped him with a hand on his arm. They looked at each other.

"Thank you, José," she said. "Not just for the purse, but for what you said earlier—about trusting me. That means a lot."

"To me too," he admitted.

She put her hands around him.

 _ **She pulls him closer, but not for a kiss.**_

In a voice so soft, he wondered if she'd said anything at all, she whispered, "I don't trust them either."

 _ **An expression of empathy—or a warning?**_

She stepped backward into her apartment, putting a finger to her lips before closing the door.

 _ **He does not know, but the fact that she chose to whisper to his natural ear—instead of the special one—will trouble him later.**_

 **THE FOLLOWING MORNING**

 **ELI SPENCER'S OFFICE**

"You must have a lot of questions," said Spencer.

"I'm not the first, am I?" said José.

"No, you're not," admitted Spencer, leaning back in his chair. "We didn't want to alarm you by telling you too much too soon, but now that you've seen it with your own eyes, you need to know what **we** know."

Spencer's speech included several strategic pauses to make it sound unrehearsed and believable.

"The man you fought last night was a Russian spy."

José stroked his chin. "I guess that explains the Vladimir Lenin goatee?"

Spencer spun his computer monitor around so José could see it. It showed a blurry image of the purse snatcher.

"We've known for some time that Russia has its own bionics program—a program decades ahead of ours. The footage uploaded from your eye revealed that your 'purse snatcher' is a man we know as the Petrograd Stalker. We don't know his real name, but he's been linked to the deaths of six agents.

"We don't know how many other bionic men the Russians have. So far, we've identified fourteen, but there are certainly more.

"In response to this threat, the OSI recruited Dr. Endo to create our own bionic task force. But even a genius like Endo can only do so much in the limited time he's had. The team he assembled had to build our bionics program up from scratch, and all of his efforts to catch up to the Russians have resulted in **you."**

Pause dramatically. Stand up. Gaze out the window vigilantly.

"We had hoped that the Russians didn't know about our program, or about our facility here in Colorado, but your encounter last night proves that there is a leak in our organization."

Turn. Make eye contact.

"The Russians know about you."

"After the mace," said José, "he could have killed me."

"The fact that he let you live means he doesn't consider you a threat—yet. He used you to send us a message. We can't expect to be that lucky next time."

Step forward. Lean over the desk dramatically.

"Make no mistake, these men are killers. To fight them, we have to be smarter than they are—and every bit as ruthless. They will not be reasonable. They have no reason to negotiate. These bionic agents—and those who protect them—have to be killed."

Point slowly, authoritatively.

"You, José, have to kill them."

José stared into space. This explained the intensity of his training—not to be a spy, but to be an assassin.

"We're waging a secret war," continued Spencer, "one where traditional rules of engagement don't apply—one that the American public can never know about." He sat behind his desk. "I know that's a lot to lay on you, but that's how it is. The Russians have a bionic army at their disposal."

José's boss sighed heavily.

"And we have you."

 **DARKWELL SPECIAL PROJECTS LAB**

 **RESTRICTED ACCESS; LOCATION CLASSIFIED**

Dr. Endo was nearly finished repairing the robot when Spencer entered the room.

"How did the meeting go?" asked the doctor.

"As planned," said Spencer. "He came into my office angry, and he left scared."

"I would have gone with the North Korean story."

The OSI director shook his head. "You think the Russians aren't scary anymore, but they are. I called his attacker the 'Petrograd Stalker.' That rattled him." Spencer leaned back against the workbench. "By the way, the beard was a little obvious. He recognized the Lenin influence."

Endo studied the robot's face. "Ah. You're right. Other than that?"

"No complaints."

Endo pulled off the face plate to make the change. "I think Jessie should be doing more to engender the sense of entitlement we're trying to nurture."

"We can't expect too much from her without letting her in on the big picture," Spencer warned. "Does she know that we were watching her date?"

"She's not a fool. She must suspect."

"She'll get with the program soon. So will José."

 **DARKWELL BIONICS LAB**

 **6:00 P.M.**

Jessie was supposed to be working on the bionic simulator. The device (part mannequin and part machine) mimicked José's bionic physique as much as possible from its mounted metal post. The duplicate bionic eye was still where she had left it the day before—between the thumb and forefinger of its upraised hand.

Jessie's attention was instead focused on the image on her computer screen. It was the blurry image of the purse snatcher from the night before.

"What are you doing, Dr. Goodwin?" asked Endo.

"Looking at the footage I recovered from José's eye," she admitted, "trying to learn something about Russian bionics."

"Mr. Spencer already has people working on that—people with more experience."

"I know, but they don't like to share," she said. "What's ferroxidrine?"

"Pardon?"

"Ferroxidrine." She spun her chair around to face her boss. "It's a drug you gave José prior to surgery. I've never heard of it, and it doesn't appear in our database."

Endo frowned. "As you know, many of the drugs developed by the OSI remain classified. You're new here, and your Security-6 clearance doesn't give you access to all of our files."

"But José has a right to know what he's been given."

Endo stepped closer—too close— and looked down at her. "His security clearance is the same as **yours** ," he reminded her, "so no, he **doesn't**. It's six o'clock. Time for you to go."

She looked back at her screen. "I have something I want to—"

"Now," he reiterated. "I need these resources for another project."

She gathered her things and left.

In the corridor, she saw Agent Kirkland approaching from the other direction. "Evening, Jessie," he greeted, attempting a smile which came across as a leer.

"Kirkland." She pulled the front of her coat closed as she passed.

At the end of the hall, she paused to look back. She saw Kirkland enter the Bionics Lab, and she remembered something Endo had said a moment ago.

"Another project?"

 **JOSÉ MENDEZ'S QUARTERS**

 **6:24 P.M.**

Worried about her patient, Jessie decided to pay him a visit before leaving the complex for the night. When she knocked on the door of his private quarters, Amber the nurse answered the door wearing her usual spandex workout gear.

"Hi, Dr. Goodwin."

"Hey, Amber. How's the workout buddy?"

"He's really motivated today."

Amber led Jessie inside where they found José slugging the punching bag that hung in his workout suite. April was offering encouragement and holding the bag—not that it needed holding. It weighed close to a ton and hung from the ceiling by a network of logging chains.

José didn't acknowledge Jessie's arrival, staying focused on the training.

Amber leaned toward Jessie's ear. "I wouldn't talk to April if I were you. I think she's jealous of you."

"Of me?"

"She's been trying to get José to open up to her, but he acts like he doesn't notice." Amber seemed annoyed. "He's not himself today. He's being mean."

"He can hear you," Jessie reminded.

"Oops." Amber looked toward José, but he continued to punch the bag. "Not that he seems to be listening. Something's upset him. He's never pushed himself like this before."

"It's getting late," said Jessie. "You should go."

Amber and April gathered their things, but José continued punching the bag relentlessly.

"José?" Jessie wasn't sure if he had noticed her arrival. "How's the eye?"

"Fine," said José, swinging his bionic right arm.

"Everything else?"

"Fine," he said, swinging his left.

"Kirkland still making you miserable?"

"He's doing his job. I should be doing mine."

"Nobody says you're not."

"I know, but I could do more." He stopped punching the bag and looked at her. He was actually sweating now. "Last night opened my eyes. The threat I'm facing seems more real now. Know what I mean?"

"Real," she said to herself. Her patient was in no position to know what real was. "Listen, I have something . . ."

José returned to the bag. "Can we do this tomorrow?" he panted, his punching arms accelerating to a blur. "I want to work on my core."

When she left, he was too busy to say goodbye.

 **ELI SPENCER'S OFFICE**

 **8:28 A.M.**

"I've got your first mission."

"Good," said José. He'd been offered a seat but preferred to stand. "I've been hoping for another shot at the purse snatcher."

"That'll come soon enough," said Spencer, leaning back in his expensive chair. "First, we deal with the leak at the OSI—the one who's been tipping off the Russians."

"You know who it is?"

"The mole is being dealt with. Your job is to get the mole's contact before he can deliver the information."

Spencer leaned forward and turned his flat screen monitor around so José could see it. "His name's Talbot, and he's well acquainted with your purse snatcher."

The wispy-haired man whose face appeared on the screen didn't look like much of a threat to José. In fact, the old codger appeared almost friendly.

"He looks old."

Spencer stood up, leaning over the desk. "Do **not** underestimate this man. He's an experienced Cold Warrior and a killer. If he sees you coming, it's over."

Spencer looked away, as if remembering a painful memory. "What makes him especially dangerous is the unfortunate fact that, until recently, he was **one** of us."

"American?"

"He was OSI."

"Oh," said José. You want me to catch Talbot and bring him back?"

"No."

"Ah."

José had hoped for more time, but it seemed events were overtaking him.

"We talked about this," continued Spencer. "These are evil men. They're a threat unlike any this country has ever known, and you, José, are our only defense. If they're not stopped, we'll have a whole army of bionic 'purse snatchers' at our door. No one wants that."

José stared at the old, almost friendly face on the computer screen.

"No," he admitted. "We sure don't."

He looked his boss in the eye. "When do I start?"

"We have a plane waiting."

 **DARKWELL MEDICAL CENTER**

 **9:40 A.M.**

Jessie arrived at work to find Amber without her usual counterpart. "Where's April?"

"She didn't come in today. Just as well, since José's not here."

"Not here?"

"They sent him on a mission. Very hush-hush. Top brass won't tell us what it's about."

 _ **She feels a pit in her stomach.**_

 _ **She knew this moment would come, but not so soon.**_

 _ **The boy is physically ready for anything, but she doubts his emotional state. The encounter of two nights ago left him unbalanced.**_

 _ **She wonders if, somehow, that was the "purse snatcher's" intent.**_

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA**

 **8:06 P.M.**

It would have been hard for José to imagine a lonelier road than the one where the unmarked OSI van had stopped. There were no signs here because the road had no name. The trees were too dense to see the stars.

"Your target is hiding in a cabin twelve miles north of here," said Kirkland. "The distance won't be hard for you to cover, but you'll want to stay off the road and out of sight. We'll be monitoring the live feed coming from your eye.

"If you need guidance, just ask. We'll hear your voice through your own ear, and we can send text messages to your bionic eye. Any questions?"

José checked the gear in his pack, but there wasn't much. Most of what he needed had been built into him.

"Nope."

"We'll meet you at the rendezvous point at 0600. Don't be late."

José walked into the forest alone—but with many eyes watching him.

 _ **The boy is nervous.**_

 _ **He feels as though his life is about to change again.**_

 _ **He is right.**_

 _ **He is about to meet me.**_

 **APARTMENT OF DR. JESSIE GOODWIN**

 **8:19 P.M.**

 _Too many secrets._

Jessie had changed into her own clothes—a tee shirt and jeans—but she didn't feel comfortable. She was preoccupied by the screen on her laptop.

 _I'm only a Security-6._

 _Dr. Endo doesn't tell me anything—and I don't like not knowing how my work is being used._

 _Not when we're playing at being masters of the universe._

Her screen displayed a live image of the Bionics Lab where Dr. Endo was working late.

 _I did it._

 _I just arranged my own private surveillance feed inside the Bionics Lab at work._

The image was streaming live from the duplicate bionic eye. She had left it between the thumb and forefinger of the bionic simulator's hand. By remotely swiveling the simulator's wrist, she could see any part of the lab from her own apartment.

 _Jessie, you're so sneaky._

Dr. Endo took off his coat. Jessie watched him do it as her fingers glided deftly across the touchpad of her computer.

 _Swivel wrist to the right. Tilt up. Stop._

 _I see you, Endo. You're going to show me what you do in there after all of us Security-6's go home._

 _Magnify 800 percent._

Endo's keyboard came into sharp focus.

 _And if you type your password into that keyboard, doctor, you'll show me a whole lot more. . . ._

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA**

 **9:54 P.M.**

The cabin looked deserted. Antiques lay rusting among the overgrowth around it, evidence that someone had once lived here, if not recently. But José knew that looks could be deceiving.

 _ **He is cautious.**_

His eye zoomed in on the front door and panned across the front-facing windows. No movement could be seen inside.

A text message appeared over the image in his eye.

That's it. Use the rear entrance.

Under the cover of darkness, José crept around the trees on the periphery of the yard on his way to the back of the cabin.

 _ **He makes no sound that a man can hear.**_

He reached the back door, taking care to stay low, under the windows.

 _ **He listens. If anyone inside is breathing, he will hear it. If any heart within is beating, he will know it.**_

 _ **Of course, he has only been trained to recognize**_ _ **HUMAN**_ _ **heartbeats.**_

He slid a lock pick into the key slot. After a few moments of probing, his bionic ear told him the lock was open.

José entered a small darkened kitchen and switched to infrared mode to see more clearly. The kitchen was vacant, yet orderly, as if someone had been there recently.

 _ **Then, something unexpected . . .**_

ERROR

You are no longer connected to the internet.

Initiating auto diagnostic

It was his eye's first error message. It took him a moment to remember how to clear the message from his field of vision.

"Huh."

 _ **Undeterred, he does what his training tells him to do.**_

 _ **He continues the mission.**_

 **OSI "WAR ROOM"**

 **RESTRICTED ACCESS; LOCATION CLASSIFIED**

In the darkened room, a team of technicians tapped their keyboards in vain. "There's some kind of interference at the source, sir," said one. "I don't understand."

"I do." The OSI director stood up. "Our target's been tipped off! Get a drone in the air! If there's a heat signature bigger than a cat within half a mile, blow it the hell up!"

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA**

José searched the cabin, ending up in the living room. He was no longer in a defensive crouch. There seemed to be no reason for caution.

"Uh, guys? I don't know if you can hear me, but nobody's here."

 _ **Now José begins to question his mission.**_

 _ **What is he really doing here?**_

 _ **Did he really come here to kill a stranger on the word of a man he did not trust until yesterday?**_

José stepped outside, abandoning stealth. He needed to think. The cool mountain air felt good, and the stars could be seen clearly from here.

"Maybe this was all a test," he thought out loud.

His opponent struck savagely from behind.

 **WHUMP!**

 _ **This is how I meet the boy.**_

 _ **I attack him—not out of fear or hatred, but because his ignorance makes him dangerous, and I have no words to make him understand.**_

The back of José's head erupted in an explosion of pain. He landed on his hands and knees, but quickly turned himself around in the dirt to look up at his attacker.

He couldn't see a face. The full moon was behind the thing, making details hard to distinguish, even in infrared, but he got the impression of an enormous silhouetted figure eight feet tall and covered in shaggy hair.

" _ **RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!"**_

The creature knew the effect that his roar had on unsuspecting humans, but it was sometimes necessary to establish dominance in these situations.

 _ **He was stunned. I had the advantage of surprise.**_

 _ **No one expects to be attacked by Bigfoot.**_

 _ **That is how the boy's story begins.**_

 _ **Now it is time to tell you mine.**_

 _To be continued . . ._

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:**_ _The saga of Bigfoot . . . in his own words_


	3. Bigfoot VI

_**Here are some scenes from "Bigfoot V" on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN!**_

* * *

"Greetings to the Earth person who finds his way here."

The image on the screen was of a white-haired explorer who, despite his human appearance, was not born on Earth. His uniform consisted of an olive-green coverall with a golden ascot around his neck, and he spoke directly to the camera with an important message about his mute companion Sasquatch.

"This creature wished to remain on your planet when we returned to our asteroid in space. He now sleeps in a state of regenerative hibernation, and when that process is complete, he will awaken and will be biologically compatible with Earth's environment."

The creature known to most earthlings as Bigfoot lay on an inclined table in a cave that had once served as a home to a colony of space explorers. The colonists had recently departed, taking most of their technology with them into space, but they had left behind what few tools were necessary for Bigfoot's transformation—including this message playback device to greet unexpected visitors.

Bigfoot's visitor on this day was Col. Steve Austin, himself a space explorer and a friend to the shaggy giant.

"This creature will not be able to speak," continued the message, "so we have left behind the means by which you may translate his thoughts and emotions into earth words. To activate the language translator, press Communications."

A keyboard of earth design had been provided for human visitors familiar with an English alphabet. Steve pressed the button marked COMM.

"There's nothing to fear," Steve told his friend. "When you wake up, you're going to be well."

Bigfoot opened his eyes and recognized his earth friend.

On the screen (also of earth design), the colonist's face was replaced by the words which formed Bigfoot's reply.

I AM NOT AFRAID

Steve was no stranger to technology, but his friend's transformation was beyond his comprehension. Alien DNA and nyosynthetic implants were being rewritten on a microscopic level to conform to earthly norms.

But what would that mean? Bigfoot was the only sasquatch Steve had ever met. Only recently had he begun to suspect that others existed.

A new message appeared on the screen.

YOU SAVED ME  
I THANK YOU

In jest, Steve once referred to his friend as Old White Eyes, but the name no longer applied. The iris of one of Bigfoot's eyes had already changed from white to a more earthly blue, and soon the other would change to match it.

I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN … AND I WILL REMEMBER

Steve smiled reassuringly. "Pleasant dreams until that day comes, my friend."

Bigfoot returned to his slumber, and Steve Austin quietly left the cave. As he did, the screen displayed a final departing thought from the sleeping giant.

MY FRIEND

* * *

 **CHAPTER THREE:** **BIGFOOT VI**

* * *

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA  
** **NOW**

José's arms and legs were bionic, but his head wasn't, and it was bleeding.

 _ **The boy is scared, confused.  
**_ _ **It is no wonder! There is so much he doesn't know!  
**_ _ **I've hurt him more than I wanted to. If only he weren't so strong, I could reason with him.  
**_ _ **I feel sorry for what I must do.**_

José looked up at the monster standing before him. Its thick shaggy hide suggested that this was an unthinking beast, but a cloth bag slung over its shoulder suggested that perhaps the creature wasn't completely wild.

What could it be? And what was that noise?

 _Bzzzzzzzzzt!_

 _ **The buzzing is coming from my pouch. It means I have an incoming message.**_

 _Bzzzzzzzzzzt!_

 _ **I should really get that.**_

José watched in utter confusion as the creature reached into its bag and pulled out what appeared to be a smartphone. The light from its display cast a bluish tint on the creature's hairy face.

Bigfoot looked at his message.

WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?

Decades ago, his friends, the alien colonists, had given him a device that translated his thoughts into "earth words." He'd had very little use for the device until someone invented the internet.

Bigfoot thought of a reply which was instantly sent.

BE PATIENT. HE MAY BE HURT.

The sasquatch then held the device outward so José could see it. Upon closer inspection, José realized it was actually two devices strapped together with zip ties. One was a smartphone, but the device strapped to its back was like nothing he had ever seen.

The words on the screen seemed intended for him.

FORGIVE ME FOR HURTING YOU. I WILL  
NOT HIT YOU AGAIN IF I CAN AVOID IT.

José's skepticism was fueled by the pain in his head. "You can talk?"

The creature squatted, putting himself at José's eye level. The screen in his hand updated.

I HAVE NO VOICE. THIS DEVICE  
TRANSLATES MY THOUGHTS INTO WORDS.

José allowed himself to relax slightly. He and the monster were communicating—so at least they weren't fighting.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked.

Through the screen, the creature replied.

I AM BIGFOOT.

"Do you think I'm an idiot?"

I DO NOT JUDGE. I AM BIGFOOT.

"Why did you hit me?"

I WAS SENT TO TRY TO REASON WITH YOU.

"By hitting me?"

YOU CAME HERE TO KILL A MAN. YOU  
WERE NOT REASONABLE. NOW YOU ARE.

José was not ready to admit that the monster had a point.

"Who sent you?"

Bigfoot stood up. Holding the phone in his left hand, he offered his right to help José to his feet.

THERE IS MUCH TO TELL, BUT THIS  
PLACE IS NOT SAFE. CAN YOU WALK?

José cautiously took the creature's hand and rose to his feet.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," said José, although he immediately felt light-headed. He looked at the sky which appeared to be spinning. "Are the stars moving?"

A moment later, Agent José Mendez collapsed in Bigfoot's arms.

 _ **It is as I feared.  
**_ _ **It seems to be my destiny to fight those I would help.**_

The creature set José gently on the grass and looked inside the cloth bag.

Among the items in Bigfoot's bag was a small metal box with an electronic display that said "jamming," but this wasn't what he sought. Instead, he removed a first-aid kit.

 _ **A device in my bag blocks the transmissions from his eye, but I must assume his watchers have other tools to look for him.  
**_ _ **If they suspect my involvement, things will be worse.**_

Bigfoot wrapped José's head in a gauze bandage, wishing he had time to do more. He slid his first-aid kit into his bag and stood up, listening for signs of pursuit.

 _ **I have stopped the bleeding. Now I must move.  
**_ _ **I have far to go, and I am no longer as strong as I was.**_

Bigfoot lifted the man gently in his arms and carried him resolutely into the darkness.

 _ **I feel a kinship with this boy. I know what it is like to be young and suddenly strong.  
**_ _ **Only someone who has experienced it would understand.  
**_ _ **I was younger than the boy when I was changed.**_

 _ **I lived in a forest.  
**_ _ **Not this forest, but one very much like it.**_

 _ **With others of my kind, I ran without care under the friendly glow of the moon.  
**_ _ **Not your moon, but one very much like it.**_

 **VERY FAR AWAY  
** **VERY LONG AGO**

The squatch clan moved silently, having no need for words. The sun had set, but the hunt had gone well.

It was time to return to the grove. It had grown dark, but the way home was familiar, and their eyes could see well at night.

 _ **We were not civilized by your standards, but we were happy.  
**_ _ **We lived in harmony with the forest—and with the humans who lived beyond it.**_

The squatches looked up with their white eyes and saw a pair of humans glide overhead propelled by seemingly magical rocket packs.

 _ **Not humans like you.**_

Their rockets usually steered clear of the wildlife preserve, but younger humans sometimes disregarded the boundaries, looking for places to avoid the attention of their elders.

 _ **The humans made sure our clans had enough room to live. But somehow they could not do the same for themselves.  
**_ _ **On our world (as on yours), it seems humans can never have enough.  
**_ _ **From the forest I could see the bright glow of their city.**_

The squatch clan sometimes paused here at night on the high bluff. They admired the city lights which appeared in many shapes and colors—some of which moved—but all of which were very far away. The lights extended over the horizon but did not cross the borders of the preserve.

When the clan resumed their homeward journey, they failed to notice that the most curious member of their clan stayed behind—still admiring the city.

 _ **I was always curious, and I wanted to see it up close.  
**_ _ **I did something I knew I shouldn't.  
**_ _ **I crossed the brightly lit markers that lined the edge of our territory—our safe zone.  
**_ _ **I ran toward the lights.  
**_ _ **I wanted to see how the humans lived.**_

Up close, the curious one could discern the illuminated structures in more detail. He bounded his way through the periphery of the city which was occupied by the autonomous machines that generated the city's power.

The machines took no notice of him.

Ahead he found a massive tower under construction. Ninety-foot tall robots did the heavy lifting while a few helmeted humans on hovering platforms supervised their progress from above. All were too busy to notice that a stray squatch had wandered far from its home.

 _ **How wondrous their world was, I thought! They must be gods to live among such lights!**_

The construction area was surrounded by a tall barrier, but it was incomplete—leaving a gap wide enough for a young squatch to squeeze through. Signs warned the curious to stay clear.

The curious one could not read.

 _ **I was trying to remain unseen, so I took paths no human would take.  
**_ _ **That's when the accident happened.**_

Inside the construction area, the squatch stood on a pile of rubble to try to see over a fence. He marveled at what his eyes beheld.

Humans! Thousands of them moved about the boulevard, some assisted by wheeled or hovering conveyances, some on foot. Flying machines darted over their heads in swift yet orderly arrays, somehow avoiding collisions with each other.

And everywhere lights were shining from vehicles, signs, lampposts, awnings and marquis. Advertisements in the form of three-dimensional holo-projections competed for the attention of passersby.

It was not all concrete and light, however. Foliage and trees extended from nooks in the sidewalks, and vines covered all the sun-facing walls of the towers. Humans used all available spaces—even vertical surfaces—for maximum ergonomic and environmental efficiency.

The sight was so overwhelming to the curious one, he failed to notice the abrupt appearance of a shadow from above.

 _ **I am told it was a construction robot, but I never saw it.  
**_ _ **It did not see me until I was under its foot.**_

 **DAYS LATER**

 _ **I woke up in a room of light.  
**_ _ **I could not move.**_

His head was encased in a kind of helmet with lights and wires.

 _ **I cried in terror. Something was wrong with my arms and legs.**_

He was in a laboratory. He lay on an examination table with a sheet draped over part of his torso. His arms were missing below the elbows, and powerful straps were wrapped around the stumps of his arms and across his torso to keep him from falling. Parts of his chest and face had been shaved where high-tech implants with blinking lights had been inserted.

Screens shaped like elongated hexagons cluttered the room and displayed his life functions. One of the screens displayed his still-beating heart.

He was afraid, but at least he wasn't alone.

 _ **There was a human there. She placed a hand over my heart and made a soothing sound.**_

"Don't cry, baby," said the woman with the pretty red hair. "I'm going to make you well."

 _ **My people do not have a spoken language as you think of it, yet the human spoke words I could understand! This had never happened before.  
**_ _ **She said her name was Shalon.  
**_ _ **I understood her because she had a machine that could put her language in my mind.  
**_ _ **Her machines could see inside my body and inside my thoughts.  
**_ _ **I lay helpless before her, yet I felt no fear because she told me not to.  
**_ _ **She smiled, and I trusted her.**_

The construction team had delivered the young squatch late at night to her lab. The veterinary hospitals had been closed for the night, and the human hospitals would not take him. Shalon was his only hope for survival.

She'd labored through the night to keep him alive. The surgical bots that performed the operation had been programmed for humans, so she'd had to modify their software and monitor each step of the process—using her own handheld scalpel for the most precarious cuts.

For days, machines kept his blood flowing. Injections of neotraxin fought the infection, and modified nanobots repaired his ruptured organs.

When he finally awoke after the fourth day, she wiped away tears of relief. She hadn't been sure if she should rouse him this early. The meds controlled his pain, but she didn't know if they would control his fear.

But she had to awaken him. The squatch had to know what she had planned.

She wheeled a small table forward so he could see the new prosthetic parts. They included not just new arms and legs, but also shiny chrome lungs and a new heart. The creature looked upon these items with quiet awe.

She wondered why he had wandered so far from the preserve. This squatch must be very special indeed.

 _ **She said she could heal me, and when I was healed, I could live among the humans.  
**_ _ **She built me new arms and legs. She called them "nyosynthetic."  
**_ _ **It took time, but I learned to use my machine parts as if they were my own.**_

The city had been cunningly engineered to accommodate the needs of its population. Although the surface streets were full of pedestrian and machine traffic, the higher levels were layered with numerous balconies, bridges and terraces which afforded more room for people to move.

For her experiment, Shalon had been granted permission to use the terrace on the forty-third level of the science tower. It was large enough for a landscaped obstacle course with gardens and trees. During the right time of day, when the sun shone between the skyscrapers, the squatch could almost imagine he was in his natural habitat.

She laughed to see the enthusiasm with which he ran through the greenery nestled in the middle of the city. Here he had room to test the limits of his new nyosynthetic abilities.

 _ **Oh, how it felt to jump again!  
**_ _ **My new arms could throw higher, my new legs could run faster, my new eyes could see farther, my new lungs could breathe more deeply than ever before. And the machine parts of my brain allowed me to have thoughts I had never before had.**_

 _ **The gods had made me one of them!**_

The creature she had first called "baby" was adjusting to his new abilities. She finally allowed herself to relax as it seemed he was improving.

But one morning she returned to find him missing.

The lab's surveillance video told the story. The young squatch had left during the night through a window, clambering down the long vines that decorated the science tower.

 _ **One day, I ran from my watchers—back into the forest to find my old clan, to show them what I'd become.  
**_ _ **That had been a mistake.**_

In the forest, his fellow squatches recognized him as their missing brother and ran to welcome him, yet they were also suspicious. They had thought him long dead. Now that he had returned, he smelled differently and behaved strangely.

The curious one tried to demonstrate that he was in good health. Indeed, he was better than he had ever been and demonstrated this by lifting a mighty tree over his head by brute strength.

They were horrified.

 _ **My kinsmen ran from me.  
**_ _ **I realized that my people were the same as I'd remembered, but**_ _ **I**_ _ **had become different.  
**_ _ **My brain was no longer so simple, and my new thoughts and abilities frightened them.  
**_ _ **My clan would never take me back.**_

 _ **I returned to Shalon.**_

When Shalon saw him clamber back into the lab, she said nothing, but hugged him for a long time as a mother hugs a child.

 _ **I did not have to explain. Somehow she knew.  
**_ _ **She said that upgrades in my brain were a necessary part of my transformation.  
**_ _ **These changes could not be undone because they made my machine parts work.  
**_ _ **I was sad, but soon she had news that distracted me from my trouble.**_

Shalon walked with her shaggy giant outside the science tower amid the people of the city. Pedestrians paid little attention to them, apparently accustomed to unexpected wonders in the Science District.

The pair emerged on a high footbridge overlooking a part of the district the squatch had never seen before. From here they could see a spacecraft as tall as the skyscrapers that surrounded it.

The _Helix_ was a starship whose unusual design mimicked a DNA molecule. The drive section was shaped like a conventional rocket and occupied the center of the craft. Wrapped around it like a spiral staircase was the crew section which inspired the ship's name. When in deep space, the entire craft would rotate, providing artificial gravity for those living within the spiral.

"I've been accepted to the crew of the _Helix_ ," she said. "It's a ship designed to go farther than we've ever gone before."

The ship was massive, dwarfing the construction robots that surrounded it. Hoverbots buzzed around its exterior, welding panels to its hull and applying heat-resistant paint after the welds cooled.

The squatch leaned against the rail of the footbridge and stared in amazement.

 _ **I did not understand at first, but she explained that her scientist friends were planning to explore the other side of the sky.**_

"It's a great honor to be accepted," said Shalon. "Won't you come with me? Do you want to explore the sky?"

 _ **How could I refuse? I had already begun to think of Shalon as my mother. And as I said, I had always been curious.**_

But there was much the squatch had yet to learn. Life in space would be very different from what he knew, and there was no time like the present to begin his education.

She took a small device from her coat pocket. It had a dial, a toggle switch, and a small screen that was invisible until it was turned on.

"My friends in the Science Council gave it to me. It's a time line converter. It can speed up or slow down time. Only deep space explorers like us are allowed to have these."

The creature was baffled.

"You don't understand, do you?" She'd suspected this concept might be difficult for the squatch's childlike mind. "Take my hand. I'll show you."

 _ **I touched her hand. She pressed a button that stopped the world.**_

Time stood still. A nearby hummingbird paused in its flight—its wings apparently frozen—unaware it had been delayed. Nearby a human child with his mother had just let go of his balloon, and the balloon waited in the air just beyond the child's grasp as if waiting for him to catch it.

As the big squatch held Shalon's arm, she fastened the time line converter to her belt. "We're moving through time very fast now," she explained. "No one can see us. To their eyes, we've disappeared. What we're seeing now is a single moment in time."

She noticed the child about to lose his balloon and took pity on him. She approached the motionless child and carefully secured the balloon's ribbon around the child's wrist, ensuring that he would not lose it again.

"We can also use the TLC to skip **ahead** in time," she explained, "a whole year within a second if we want."

Shalon and her companion took one last look at the _Helix_ before turning to go home.

"A time line converter is a responsibility few people are given," she explained, "but without it, our voyage wouldn't be possible."

They navigated around the frozen pedestrians in the motionless crowd.

"We're going to be gone for 1400 years."

 **MUCH, MUCH LATER  
** **DEEP, DEEP IN SPACE**

Shalon's people knew how to plan ahead for long-term problems. They understood that the resources of their home world were limited. Within a few thousand years a new world would be needed, and finding that world was the ambitious mission of the _Helix_.

 _ **Each of the**_ _ **Helix's**_ _ **crew was chosen for their unique abilities.  
**_ _ **Thanks to Shalon, I had unique abilities of my own.**_

Shalon watched her baby through the window of the observation deck. He was outside using his enhanced strength to bend their main comms antenna back to the shape it had had before an asteroid had hit it.

The shaggy giant paused to stare at the planet far below and its backdrop of uncountable stars.

The giant had no fear of space. His genetically modified skin protected him from the vacuum, and his nyosynthetic lungs stored enough compressed air for him to spend hours working comfortably outside.

To him, it was play. Shalon knew he would come inside when he felt cold.

 _ **It began to seem that 1400 years would pass quickly.  
**_ _ **How small the forest of my birth now seemed!**_

 _ **But when our ship stopped near your planet, the beauty of your world seemed to call to Shalon.**_

Each member of the crew watching the main view screen wore a uniform of a different color. The captain—who wore white—stared judiciously at the planet earth.

"This one? We're looking for planets to **colonize**. This planet's already inhabited."

Shalon's jumpsuit was blue. "Aren't you curious how this planet came to be so similar to our own? The forests, the sea life . . . Even their moon is the same size."

"I agree," said Apploy, the green-suited mathematician. "This is a mystery we must investigate."

 _ **Our commander decided we should set up a temporary base on an asteroid to observe your world from a distance. But after much debate, he was convinced to allow a small colony on the surface of earth itself.  
**_ _ **When the Helix resumed its long voyage, 28 observers stayed behind to study the earth—including Shalon and myself—until the ship returned in 350 years.**_

A preliminary survey of the native population determined that the North American continent was almost entirely free of earth people. It was the perfect place for alien visitors who hoped to go unnoticed for a few centuries while they did their quiet research.

They found a geologically interesting place that was not yet called Wyoming.

 **THE YELLOWSTONE CALDERA  
** **JULY 11, 1726**

"There are geysers all over this area," said Shalon.

"It's volcanically active," said Dallett, the red-suited geologist. "In two centuries, it'll explode and plunge the earth into a new ice age."

"That would be horrible!" said Shalon who had been looking forward to the feel of sunshine on her skin after her long space journey. "You're not thinking of letting it happen?"

Dallett adjusted the magma dispersal program on his handheld device. "I've already worked out the solution, but we should check back in a hundred years or so to make sure it's working."

 _ **Their machines made it easy to cheat time, something they did often and with little care. Each time we jumped forward in time, they saw the outcome of a new geologic experiment, and I saw the progression of your history.**_

After investigating several sites, the visitors established a colony in a deep cave within the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Underground magma was rerouted to provide geothermic power, and surveillance systems were installed to discreetly study the local population.

 _ **Our leader was Apploy who was wise in the art of numbers. He was a genius who rarely shared his feelings—believing that men of science shouldn't have any. That was unfortunate, since his lack of passion sometimes made him slow to understand the hearts of those he led.**_

 _ **Like Nedlick, his second in command. Nedlick was an ambitious man who coveted Apploy's position. None of us knew at the time how deep his ambition ran.**_

 _ **It was an awkward alliance between these two. One saw the earth as a mystery to solve. The other, as a resource to be seized.**_

 _ **Shalon, meanwhile, busied herself with observing the behavior of the native earth people.**_

The view screen in her lab showed a pair of natives spearfishing in a nearby river. Now that the Omniscanner had been installed successfully, it had become a useful tool for observing the locals.

 _ **She was certain that there must be natural conditions on both worlds that caused our two planets to evolve along parallel paths.**_

 _ **My theory was that both worlds were seeded by the same gods—perhaps by the pyramid builders who visited us long ago. My theory amused her and made her laugh.**_

 _ **From a distance, we studied you, the earth humans, and by doing so, we learned much about ourselves. Earthlings are much like Shalon's ancestors were.**_

 _ **We hid our colony deep in the caves under the North American continent. The entrance was camouflaged and fortified with defenses no outsider could breach even if it were discovered.**_

 _ **And if a native human got too curious about the cave entrance, or interfered with one of our experiments, I led them back to the colony where they were gently subdued for study.**_

A native American man slept in the examination room—unaware that someone else watched his dreams.

The hexagonal viewing screen on Shalon's wall displayed the drama unfolding in the native's mind. It currently involved a hunt for a deer and the face of a girl he hoped to impress with his catch.

The dream was also observed by the giant at Shalon's side.

 _ **My mother examined many of your kind this way—exploring their minds to see what drew them so close—before releasing them back to their native habitat with their memories of the encounter carefully removed.**_

On the screen, one of the native's recent memories appeared—an ominous silhouette of the shaggy giant.

 _ **Shalon said the natives' brightest memories were of me. They feared me, called me Wild Man—or "Sasquatch."  
**_ _ **This became my new name, which amused me because it reminded me of my simple beginnings.**_

"Lie back, Sasquatch," said Shalon. "I'm going to run a little test of your mergeron cells."

As Sasquatch lay on the examination platform, he was suddenly startled by the security door which snapped shut unexpectedly.

 **CLANG!**

"Don't be alarmed. We're not trapped." Shalon stroked Sasquatch's tangled hair to keep him calm. "The doors closed automatically because my sensors detected an unauthorized TLC."

She looked upward and addressed the empty air. "Did you hear that, Faler? The lab is sealed, so you can't get out—even with your time line converter. You might as well show yourself."

 _"Ah-CHOO!"_

The sound of Faler's sneeze was hardly a surprise. He alone among the colonists had been vulnerable to the allergens of this world and seemed to take it personally—as if the planet were doing it on purpose.

Shalon offered him a cloth to wipe his nose. "What brings you snooping around my lab, Faler? Or did you stop by just to get a handkerchief?"

"I must have forgotten to turn my TLC off," said Faler.

"Yes, that sounds plausible. Well done," said Shalon.

Faler wiped his nose and pointed an accusing finger at the screen on her wall. " **You're** one to talk about snooping, since you're the one who controls the colony's giant spy machine."

The hexagonal screen showed live images of a nearby native American settlement.

"You mean the Omniscanner?" she asked. "It's a research tool. And programmed with privacy safeguards, so it can only be used to observe locations outside the Colony, or for screen-to-screen contact, but not to spy on other colonists." She smiled innocently. "Why so suspicious?"

"Do I have to say it?" he asked rhetorically. "Everyone knows you and Apploy are keeping secrets. You're his favorite. He lets you have privileges the rest of us would never have—like a pet monster as your personal bodyguard."

 _ **"GRRRRRRHHH!"**_

The growl let Faler know that Sasquatch didn't appreciate his tone.

"Sasquatch isn't a monster," she said defensively. "He's my baby. He'd warm up to you if you'd stop treating him like an unthinking beast."

She stood protectively in front of Sasquatch, though it was obvious the nearly eight-foot-tall creature didn't need it. She remotely opened the door. "I think you'd better go. You might upset him."

Faler relented, but such confrontations had become a pattern.

 _ **Faler was right about one thing.  
**_ _ **She kept secrets. We all did.  
**_ _ **By that time, Shalon had two laboratories. One was for public use, but the other was hidden far below in the deep caves and known only to her and me.**_

Shalon led Sasquatch into the darkened lab she called their "Safe Room." It was outfitted like her other lab in the upper caves, but this one was crowded with shelves full of provisions in case she needed them for an unplanned emergency.

It had taken time and effort to create this room in secret, but time was never in short supply for a woman with her own time line converter.

"Baby, this must be very confusing for you," she confided as she closed the camouflaged door behind them. "You've noticed that Nedlick and Faler have been openly defiant toward us. I don't want to alarm you, but I'm sure that Nedlick is using Faler to spy on me."

She threw a heavy switch on the wall. A hexagonal viewing screen came to life, displaying a comforting burning log, simulating a fireplace. The room was bathed in a friendly amber glow.

"That's why I created this secret room, even though Apploy would never approve if he knew. You and I are the only ones who know about this place, and it has everything I need to take care of both of us—in case things get worse."

She looked up into her baby's inhuman white eyes. She placed her hands on his big arms. Despite his massive size, she worried for his safety.

"If you ever feel afraid, just come here to this Safe Room and lock the door. I promise it will be all right."

 _ **With humans, it is hard to know whom to trust. In the end, Shalon trusted only me.**_

 **NOW**

Bigfoot's arms grew tired. He was not nearly as strong as he had been in his youth, but soon he would rest. His destination was near. He had reached the familiar caves of his home, and ahead of him was the White Tunnel.

On rare occasions, earth people had attempted to follow him into this underground refuge, but they had always been stopped in this White Tunnel which had a debilitating effect on intruders. Bigfoot remembered the old days when it used to rotate.

Tonight the walls no longer moved, but the bluish white glow never changed.

 _ **Long did I live with humans, so I understand them as well as any outsider can.  
**_ _ **I can tell you that the humans of our two worlds are more alike than different.  
**_ _ **On both worlds, there are those like Nedlick who abuse the power they've been given.**_

At that moment in Colorado, OSI director Eli Spencer barked angrily into his phone.

"The drones don't see anything except you and your team, Kirkland. Tell me you found something!"

 _ **And those like Faler willing to do their bidding.**_

"Just some very large footprints, sir," answered Agent Kirkland.

 _ **And there are those like my mother—forced by impossible circumstances to make choices they thought they'd never make.**_

"Do it, Endo," Jessie muttered quietly at the laptop in her kitchen. "Type your password."

In the Bionics Lab, the duplicate bionic eye continued to stare from its perch between the thumb and forefinger of the bionic simulator, while a few feet away, Dr. Endo finally sat down at his computer.

His fingers typed a single word, and Jessie's laptop recorded the keystrokes in ultra-high definition.

"Gotcha."

 _ **And there are those like me—and this boy—forced by others to serve agendas that aren't our own.**_

José stirred briefly. He was vaguely aware of being carried by a powerful creature he had never seen before. He thought he saw a bluish white light but knew he must have imagined it.

What he saw now was just as unexpected.

 _ **I understand your kind too well.  
**_ _ **I have been watching you for almost 300 years.  
**_ _ **I know your history—including some things hidden from you.  
**_ _ **I will share a hidden part of that history with you now . . .**_

 _ **. . . a part of your history that the hubris of your kind has not allowed you to see.**_

José saw dozens of sasquatches surrounding them.

 _ **I have never been the only sasquatch on your world.**_

The creatures walked throughout the corridors of the cave system. They gathered in large chambers with their families to eat, to play and to sleep. They were of different sizes and colors. Some carried their young on their backs. They took little notice of José as they passed—except the children who occasionally stopped to stare.

José hoped that he remembered this dream when he woke up.

 _ **This is a good place. The humans will not find us here.  
**_ _ **When the colonists left, I brought others of my kind here to be safe, but the sasquatches have always been good at hiding.  
**_ _ **Throughout their history, humans could not find them. Even my fellow colonists did not suspect they existed.**_

 _ **That was my discovery.**_

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA  
** **APRIL 12, 1850**

Sometimes the shaggy giant—or "Bigfoot" as white settlers now called him—wandered from the colony to explore the earth's environment. In addition to many natural wonders, he had also seen human forts, missions, gardens and shantytowns—although usually from a distance.

Now, for the first time in this deep forest, he recognized a scent that he didn't think belonged to this world.

 _ **It was in the spring, more than a century after my arrival (as you measure time), when I caught a scent I had not expected to ever catch again—the scent of my own people.  
**_ _ **I followed it—and discovered a small band of sasquatches foraging in the deep woods.  
**_ _ **Sasquatches native to earth!  
**_ _ **I had not dared to hope.**_

There were five of the creatures, and one by one, each stopped to stare at him.

 _ **In my glee, I approached them, to see them up close. I wanted to gain their trust.  
**_ _ **I was overeager and provoked a reaction of terror. On sight of me, they ran as if from a monster.**_

Bigfoot stopped as the realization dawned on him.

 _ **It was my eyes. They were not the eyes of an earth sasquatch. They were not pretty.**_

His disappointment was overwhelming, but only for a moment.

 _ **There was one among the clan who did not run.  
**_ _ **She watched me with a curious smile that was not at all fearful.  
**_ _ **I was something new to her, and being curious herself, she approached me.**_

Few humans have ever seen sasquatches closely enough to appreciate the differences between the males and the females. To most humans, the differences would be subtle.

To Bigfoot, they were not.

Her smile was bashful. Her fur was orange and wispy. Her eyes glistened with the morning sun.

 _ **It was my turn to be afraid.  
**_ _ **She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.**_

 _To be continued . . ._

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:**_ _Bride of Bigfoot_


	4. Bride of Bigfoot

**CHAPTER FOUR: BRIDE OF BIGFOOT**

* * *

 **DR. JESSIE GOODWIN'S APARTMENT  
** **11:45 P.M.**

 _I'm in.  
_ _I shouldn't be doing this.  
_ _Endo's password gives me Security-9 access.  
_ _I'm only Security-6._

The screen on Dr. Jessie Goodwin's laptop displayed an official-looking OSI banner and an unsettling message of welcome.

PASSWORD ACCEPTED.  
GOOD EVENING, DR. ENDO.

Until this moment, she hadn't believed this would work. She could lose her job—or worse.

 _Just a quick look around then.  
_ _First, a simple question._ _What is "ferroxidrine?"_

She typed the name of the mysterious drug her bionic patient had been given to prepare him for surgery.

 _Here it is. Used to treat "bionic rejection syndrome?"  
_ _First used by Dr. Rudy Wells, who used it only once._

 _Why only once?  
_ _Tell me more. Copy the Wells file._

She located the file in the personnel database and dragged it from the secure OSI server to her own hard drive. A progress bar appeared.

DOWNLOAD 0% COMPLETE. APPROXIMATELY 52 MINUTES REMAIN.

 _Sweet Mary! His file's huge!  
_ _Why is Rudy Wells so important that he has so many gigabytes in his personnel file?  
_ _And if he's so important, how come I've never heard of him?_

 _This is going to take longer than I thought.  
_ _While it's downloading, I'll get the file on his patient, too. His name was . . ._

She clicked the file on Jaime Sommers. The first page of a detailed biography appeared on her screen along with a photograph from 1975.

 _No way._

She clicked back to check again. There was only one Jaime Sommers in the database.

Originally from Ojai, California, Sommers was a pro tennis player until her career was cut short by a skydiving accident. Then . . .

Jessie stared at the screen with her mouth open. None of what followed made any sense.

 _There was a bionic WOMAN?  
_ _In 1975?_

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA  
** **2:39 A.M.**

 _ **The boy is unconscious.  
**_ _ **I cannot bring him to a hospital. Humans will not help him now.**_

Shalon's examination room was not what it had once been. Bigfoot remembered when it had been brightly lit, antiseptically clean, and filled with technology he didn't understand. That had been forty years ago.

Since then, the alien colonists had left the complex, taking their main power converter with them. However, a simple geothermically powered infrastructure was still part of the cave system which provided enough energy for a pair of floor lamps and a small laptop that rested on a tall box. There were also some second-hand shelves and crates, one of which had become a home to a colony of spiders

Of the room's original furnishings, only Shalon's examination table remained. It was of exceptional quality—made of a durable acrylic—but still just a table.

Bigfoot sat silently in an oversized armchair that smelled like him.

The boy, José Mendez, lay upon the table with his bandaged head resting on pillows. A female sasquatch whom Bigfoot trusted lay her hand gently upon José's brow to check for a fever. A sasquatch child just tall enough to see over the table stared at the human with interest.

 _ **The sasquatches are not as simple as humans believe.  
**_ _ **They are shy, but inquisitive.  
**_ _ **They adapt.  
**_ _ **I have taught them some things I know—including some remedies my mother taught me.  
**_ _ **My mother was a doctor.**_

 _ **But I am just a foolish old sasquatch who learned to read from a machine.  
**_ _ **I was given a metal box that translates my thoughts into words. I have a few books.**_

 _ **And a wireless internet connection. Don't tell.**_

 _ **I have faith that the boy will recover. He is young and resilient.  
**_ _ **Just as I was long ago. . . .**_

 **SAN ANGELO MOUNTAINS, CALIFORNIA  
** **APRIL 12, 1850**

The two sasquatches stared at each other as they tried to make sense of each other's scents. Both seemed alien to the other, but familiar as well.

Moments earlier, each would have been certain that the other couldn't possibly exist. The male—the one with the white eyes who was technically a deep space explorer who had already seen many wondrous things in his life—was by far the more nervous of the two. It was the female—the one with the glistening dark eyes and the orange wispy fur— who initiated first contact.

 _ **She did not have a name as you would think of it.  
**_ _ **The sasquatch language is a subtle mix of gestures and vocalizations, but her language was still a mystery to me.  
**_ _ **In my mind, I called her "Dew," for that is what her eyes reminded me of.  
**_ _ **I smelled fertility within her, but I did not know how to express my interest, or even if I should try.  
**_ _ **We stared at each other for a long time.**_

 _ **She pulled a leaf from my hair . . .**_

 _ **And a ladybug from my beard. . . .**_

 _ **She began the ritual of grooming that is customary for courtship.**_

 _ **Only after she had dutifully picked clean my face and all my fur did I dare to place a hand upon her. She did not pull away.**_

 _ **I will say no more of this.**_

 _ **That evening, Dew led me to her clan and introduced me to her kin.  
**_ _ **I tried to hide in the shadows until I was sure that I was welcome, but she beckoned me forward with a simple gesture and a smile.  
**_ _ **No words were necessary. Our scent had told the story.**_

Bigfoot stepped forward to meet Dew's father. The patriarch puffed up his chest—which Bigfoot correctly interpreted as a gesture of authority. The appropriate response, he guessed, was to hunch in submission. He risked a glance at the patriarch's eyes to see if he were doing it properly.

The patriarch carefully inspected the newcomer's strange eyes. Bigfoot broke eye contact lest this be interpreted as a challenge.

The patriarch sniffed Bigfoot's face and shoulders for a long time. Bigfoot's scent was puzzling at first, but not off-putting—and the patriarch knew intuitively that diversity was good for the bloodline. The father turned to the daughter and grunted his approval.

By the customs of the clan, Bigfoot and Dew were mated.

 _ **The sasquatches are few in number, so it is always welcome for a clan to find another of their kind unexpectedly—even one as strange as I.**_

 _ **For months I traveled with Dew's clan. She and I would often sneak away from the group to explore a meadow or a cave, and we would not hurry back.  
**_ _ **I had been accepted as part of the clan, so the others did not worry about us.  
**_ _ **They could see I was strong enough to protect their Dew.**_

 _ **Of course, I did not allow them to see how strong my machine parts had made me.  
**_ _ **I only shared that secret with Dew because she alone had no fear of me.**_

Bigfoot and Dew found a dead tree that had fallen across their path. Bigfoot looked around them to be sure they were alone. Then he crouched before the massive tree and lifted it over his head so that Dew could pass underneath.

Dew backed away in alarm. He noted her reaction and returned the tree gently to the ground.

Dew looked at him quizzically for a moment. Then she raised her arms and ran in a celebratory circle that ended with an exuberant hoot. In sasquatch language, this means, "Do it again!"

 _ **Occasionally our clan crossed paths with other clans, and such encounters were always a cause for celebration.**_

A gathering of two sasquatch clans is a private affair never witnessed by human eyes. First there is a dialogue of the clan leaders to determine each clan's intent. If the meeting is successful, there is a shared hunt followed by a feast at sundown.

The moon rises, and the sasquatches dance until their knuckles and toes are caked with dirt and the air is heavy with pheromones.

In the morning, the clans say farewell to loved ones—as must always happen when suitable mates are agreed upon and the time has come for the clans to separate. It is the nature of sasquatches to always wander.

 _ **These encounters were exceedingly rare, which worried the clans, for it was a sign that their numbers were dwindling.**_

On one of their private wanderings, Bigfoot and Dew paused on the edge of a deep gorge to watch the puzzling activity of newly arrived humans.

An industrial gold mining operation had been established. It was an intricate network of ladders, scaffolds and catwalks built into the ridge on the opposite side of the gorge. The dominant feature was a twenty-foot diameter hoisting wheel driven by river water which lifted gravel from underground mine shafts. Men ferried the rock in wheelbarrows from the shafts to rotating sifting bins that separated the gravel from the gold.

 _ **The sasquatches are shy and fear the scent of man.  
**_ _ **The tribes of "Indians" kept a respectful distance from us, but the arrival of European settlers upset the natural balance.  
**_ _ **Each new settlement drove the sasquatches further into the wilderness, and the wilderness was shrinking.**_

The sasquatches sought more familiar territory deeper in the wild.

 _ **After many months, our clan returned to the mountains where Dew and I first met.  
**_ _ **Since she had welcomed me to her family, I felt bound to introduce her to mine.**_

In the White Tunnel, Shalon greeted the newlyweds, giving Bigfoot a heartfelt hug, and clasping Dew's hand in a gesture of welcome.

 _ **Shalon had not wondered about my absence. Her technology let her see me—even when I was far away. Always she watched me as a mother watches a child.  
**_ _ **She welcomed Dew and me as a proud mother would. She saw the affection in our hearts.**_

In her examination room, Shalon gave Dew a clean bill of health—and good news.

 _ **Her machines confirmed what we had already guessed.**_

 _ **Dew carried my seed.**_

Shalon celebrated by making a lasting record of the occasion—a family portrait. Indeed, what were they if not a family? The three of them posed in the manner of humans, and although Dew didn't understand the need for it, she managed to smile for the scanner that recorded their likenesses for posterity.

 _ **Dew and I decided we must leave the colony to rejoin her clan and begin our family. Shalon agreed it was a good plan.  
**_ _ **Soon Shalon and the science colony would make another jump to a future time when Dew and I would be old.  
**_ _ **Shalon promised to look for us to see how large our family had grown.**_

Shalon hugged her baby goodbye.

 _ **It is difficult to say goodbye to your mother.  
**_ _ **There are tears.**_

 **THE SIERRA MOUNTAINS  
** **WEEKS LATER**

As another wagon train appeared from the desert, the sasquatches of the clan watched from afar.

 _ **We continued to retreat from the advance of European settlers.  
**_ _ **As time wore on, however, I became fascinated by the "Indians" and their approach to this problem.**_

 _ **Some of their tribes fought back against the invaders.**_

 _ **At times we witnessed the aftermath of these conflicts. Resistance was not without cost for the Indians.  
**_ _ **Yet it seemed to me they were wise to resist. What good could come from the advance of the newcomers?  
**_ _ **If the Indians fell, would not the sasquatches be next?**_

Bigfoot's restless mind focused repeatedly on the question. He began to wonder if he could solve the problem posed by the white invaders.

Could sasquatches help the Indians?

Not as the clans presently were—not as wild and unorganized wanderers.

 _ **I began to imagine all the remaining sasquatch clans uniting as one large clan.  
**_ _ **I imagined an alliance of the clans and the Indian tribes that could turn back the invading white men.**_

Surely Indians and sasquatches together would be mightier than the white invaders, he thought. And naturally Bigfoot, the mightiest of them all, would lead the charge.

It was a romantic notion, but a persistent one.

 _ **Once, we witnessed the beginning of an attack on a native settlement by whites. I saw the natives about to suffer terribly at white hands.  
**_ _ **I felt that our clan must not just stand by and watch. I felt the urge to help.  
**_ _ **But the others of Dew's kin felt it was a human matter to be settled by humans.**_

 _ **So I told my clan to continue without me. I would do what I could alone and catch up with them later.  
**_ _ **I told Dew to stay with the clan and not to worry.**_

The attackers were not professional soldiers, but a loose collection of armed miners with a common interest. They had come to California in search of gold, and the natives were in the way.

When the miners attacked, they did not expect the settlement to have a guardian swinging an uprooted tree in its defense.

 _ **The science colony had not allowed me to interfere with the affairs of humans, but now I was no longer bound by such rules.  
**_ _ **I joined the fray. And I did not keep my power a secret.**_

Startled miners were swept from their saddles by the tree-wielding giant. Some fired their weapons, but a monster that could jump fifty feet in the air and run faster than their horses proved to be a difficult target. Those who stayed to reload their weapons in the hope of having a second chance against the beast faced a storm of arrows from the natives determined to defend their families and homes.

The miners scattered—many on foot, bereft of their mounts.

 _ **At first the natives feared me, but when they saw my intentions, they rallied behind me.  
**_ _ **To them, it seemed that a mountain spirit had been sent to their aid. I was the divine manifestation of their justice.  
**_ _ **In the heat of battle, they welcomed me as their god.**_

One miner, stunned and abandoned by his companions, looked around the clearing for his lost mount only to find Bigfoot standing before him holding the kicking horse over his head. The man fled faster than he knew he could and was stopped only by a hail of arrows in his back.

Grateful natives swarmed around the sasquatch. The giant was bewildered by the reverence in the natives' faces. He had almost forgotten to set down the horse.

As the frightened mount ran off, Bigfoot raised his fist in triumph. The natives cheered and gathered around him, eager to touch his fur and to welcome him into their tribe.

 _ **It was a clear victory. It felt good to make a difference, but after the battle, I could not stay.  
**_ _ **I had no words to explain myself, so it seemed best to disappear.**_

He ran into the hills. The younger natives tried to follow, but their god did not wish to be found.

 _ **It was many hours later when I rejoined the clan, but Dew was not among them.  
**_ _ **The expressions on the faces of the clan told me what had happened. Dew had feared for my safety. She had sneaked away to look for me.  
**_ _ **I retraced my steps to find her.**_

 **THE GOLD MINE  
** **THAT NIGHT**

The miners who straggled back to the work camp knew they would have a difficult time explaining their humiliating and costly defeat. The locals were accustomed to hearing tall tales from the frontier, but given the extraordinary nature of what had happened, the miners thought it was best to compare notes so they could return to their friends with a more credible story.

The last two miners to return, however, told a very different tale. Driven by curiosity—or perhaps embarrassment—the pair had doubled back toward the natives' settlement to have a second look at what had attacked them.

Much later, they returned to the gold mine pulling a tarp-covered wagon, and offered to tell their tale in return for a few swigs of whiskey.

"I always said there was unnatural things up on them mountains," said the man known as Stink Eye Sal, "and tonight, we all saw it."

"Yup," said Merlin, his friend. "I seen it, too."

"'Course, I was the one that said we should turn back an' fight the thing head on," Sal continued, "'cuz it couldn't be as tough as it seemed when we was blinded by the sun."

"Tha's right," Merlin agreed. "Not so tough."

Merlin illustrated this point by pulling up a corner of the wagon's tarp, revealing a lifeless bloody arm covered in wispy orange fur.

"Sure enough, when this un came sniffin' after us, we both shot it in the gut point blank."

"Heh, heh! Boom!"

"It came down like a big ol' timber!"

"Heh! Timber!"

Sal took another swig of whisky as his friend continued to pull back the tarp, revealing more of the strange carcass.

Their friends reacted in horror, and some scrambled to get away. At first, the storytellers were pleased by this reaction, and Merlin was about to poke the carcass to demonstrate that it was indeed dead, but then he had the strange idea he should turn around.

"Where y'all goin'?" asked Sal. He didn't yet know that the lifeless shape in the wagon was not what had inspired such terror in the crowd, but the much larger shape that now loomed behind him in the darkness.

When he finally turned and looked up, the bestial face he saw expressed only puzzlement. Then its unearthly white eyes beheld the contents of the wagon, and its face fell into shock.

And dread.

And despair.

 _ **How?  
**_ _ **How could I have been so wrong?**_

Jagged teeth clenched in rage. Alien eyes shifted like daggers to the puny thing named Sal. Merlin, his friend, fell quivering to his knees.

Sal managed to raise his rifle. Bigfoot swatted it away before tossing him into the night-shrouded treetops.

Merlin tried to scramble to safety. The beast grabbed him by the foot and hurled him in the opposite direction.

Bigfoot glared at the pitiless night sky and wailed.

 _ **"RRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!"**_

 _ **In my grief, I destroyed their mining machines.  
**_ _ **All of them.  
**_ _ **I left nothing standing.  
**_ _ **They could not stop me.  
**_ _ **I did not kill anyone. That was not my intent.  
**_ _ **I left them with their lives, but nothing else.  
**_ _ **I wanted them to survive, and to know what they had done, and to feel shame.**_

Bigfoot left the shattered operation in flames and ruin. No one stood in his path.

After a long march, he reached a high cliff and dropped to one knee. Turning his eyes toward the stars that were once his home, he wondered how it was possible that he had come so far to be so alone.

 _ **I made a decision that night.  
**_ _ **I did not belong among earth men. They were wicked.  
**_ _ **Nor did I belong with the sasquatches. I was unworthy.**_

He marched for days to reach the science colony. Shalon met him with a hug.

 _ **Mother understood.  
**_ _ **She always did.**_

 _ **Most of the science colony left me alone after that night. No one wanted to provoke me in my grief.  
**_ _ **So it was a surprise when, one day, Shalon asked for my help.  
**_ _ **It seemed that some new technology of the earth humans was interfering with mother's work.  
**_ _ **She asked if I would mind discouraging them.  
**_ _ **She knew how to cheer me up.**_

 **FEBRUARY 1, 1976**

The troubling images displayed on Shalon's screen had been uploaded from the mind of the earth geologist, Marlene Bekey, who now slept in her examination room. Using crude technology of earthly design, Marlene—with her husband Ivan—had detected the volcanic vents that powered the alien colony.

Soon, Ivan and Marlene would be released unharmed with their memories of their abduction carefully deleted, but Shalon wondered if that would be enough. The young couple was part of a research team which had already reported them missing. The Omniscanner's surveillance of the area showed that a search was underway that threatened to expose the science colony itself.

The colonists had chosen this North American location for its remoteness—but that had been 250 years ago, and the overachieving earthlings had broadened their boundaries.

To discourage their curiosity, Shalon sent Bigfoot to pay the human outpost a visit. The giant crushed their instruments, smashed their generator, overturned their truck and tossed armed guards like dolls.

 _ **More than a century of your history had passed—but for me, it had been only weeks since the passing of my Dew.  
**_ _ **I saw the new machines of the earth humans as further evidence of their wickedness. With righteous anger I smashed them like toys.**_

The researchers were baffled by the attack. One of them, a descendent of the Miwok tribe, claimed he recognized the footprint of the sasquatch.

To find the unknown attacker, the government brought in dozens of expert trackers, and one of them had a bionic eye.

 _ **There was a human who followed me, and he was not like the others.  
**_ _ **Like me, he was curious and could not be easily dissuaded.  
**_ _ **And like me he had been rebuilt with special powers.**_

 _ **Shalon sent me to test him.**_

Steve Austin quickly surmised that the giant was not a man. It was too big, for one thing, and its white eyes were stranger than anything he had ever seen. He had never seriously considered the existence of Bigfoot until this moment.

"Easy now, easy. I don't want to hurt you. I'd like to think the feeling is mutual."

It was not. The monster swung its fist at him with the power of a cannon.

Steve ducked, but soon found himself locked in a bear hug that squeezed all the air from his lungs. It took a desperate jab with a bionic elbow to dislodge the beast.

Before he could recover, however, the creature was upon him again, slamming him into the ground and grappling with him in the dirt. The sasquatch weighed a quarter ton and possessed more strength than even Steve's bionics could match.

Steve kicked the brute against a tree. The creature's response was to uproot the tree and swing it. The trunk hit Steve's vulnerable left arm, painfully tearing ligaments in his shoulder.

He knew he had to end the fight quickly or be at the creature's mercy.

Bigfoot fought like a wrestler, Steve realized. How would it react to judo?

Steve repeatedly tried to grab the creature's arm with his bionic hand, hoping he could flip it over his back. His first attempt failed. His second attempt had a surprising result.

Sparks flashed. The monster's arm separated at the shoulder and came loose in Steve's hand.

 _ **Steve passed the test.**_

With a savage cry that shook the treetops, Bigfoot snatched the arm away from Steve's hand, knocking him down and fleeing into the woods.

 _ **I led him to the colony.**_

Recognizing the threat posed by this uniquely powerful man, the colonists sealed themselves inside the colony by melting solid rock over the entrance and using time line converters to cool the lava.

Steve entered the cave to find a featureless rock wall, but his special eye detected the heat signature of fresh volcanic rock. He burrowed through it with his bionic arm and pried open the barrier behind it.

Steve lunged into the White Tunnel where the eerie glow made him pause. The inside of the column rotated in an unearthly way, a high-pitched whine filled his head, and he became light-headed.

Despite his bionics, Steve's inner ear and nervous system were entirely human.

He collapsed.

 _ **Later, Shalon studied the bionic man closely.**_

He lay helplessly on the exam table as Shalon explained that he was safe. She surprised him with an affectionate kiss, and—with a flip of her time line converter—appeared to vanish.

Upon her return, she answered his questions and welcomed his help repairing Bigfoot's damaged limb.

"Now the arm is not only reconnected, but strengthened," she claimed, inspecting the beast's shoulder. "Not even **you** could pull it off now."

"I've got no desire to try," said Steve.

"The final thing is to reinsert the mergeron power cell."

She referred to the tiny cylindrical battery that was the source of Bigfoot's power. "It's an antimatter power source. Your people will discover it in a century or so."

 _ **His strength and resilience were extraordinary for his kind, but his most extraordinary gifts were those natural to him.  
**_ _ **He was quick to smile and slow to judge.  
**_ _ **He was fiercely defensive of his own kind, but eager to help strangers, even enemies.  
**_ _ **Such a man must surely be unique on this planet, I thought.**_

When an earthquake trapped the colonists underground, the earth man and the sasquatch worked together to rescue them.

"I sure like it better when we're on the same team," Steve admitted when it was over. His shaggy friend patted him on the back in agreement.

"You will not be forgotten," Shalon promised.

"I wish I could say the same." Steve knew she would remove his memory of the adventure, but her farewell kiss suggested how much she would regret it.

 _ **A few months later, the traitor Nedlick revealed his treachery for all to see.**_

 **SEPTEMBER 19, 1976**

Bigfoot followed Shalon into the examination room for a health check, but two men loyal to Nedlick had lain in wait for them in her lab. An unexpected hand covered Shalon's mouth. Bigfoot lunged at her attacker.

 _ **I reacted intuitively, but I was too slow.**_

Bigfoot's neck erupted in pain before he could reach her. Nedlick stood in the doorway with a discharged weapon in his hand—the source of the electronic dart that was now burrowing into Bigfoot's neck.

"I've got her time line converter!" shouted the man holding Shalon. He held it in the air like a trophy as his captive struggled to get it back.

"Good," Nedlick approved. "Faler, close the door."

Nedlick's allergy-prone assistant strutted into the room and sealed it.

Bigfoot was on his knees in pain—which amused Nedlick. "The implant behind your ear, Sasquatch, is my invention. You can't pull it out. It's already attached to your skull." He held up a device in his hand for Bigfoot to see. "It will stay there to ensure your loyalty. You're going to help me, because if you don't, you're going to hear this."

 _ **EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!**_

Bigfoot covered his ears, but the incapacitating noise came from within his own head.

"Stop it!" Shalon cried. "You're hurting him!"

Nedlick switched the device off, and Bigfoot slumped to the floor, panting.

"That was a demonstration, Sasquatch, but I promise I can make it last for hours." He turned to Shalon. "And I can do far worse than that to **you**."

Nedlick's accomplices dragged Shalon onto the inclined table and forced her hands into manacles intended only for test subjects.

"What do you want, Nedlick?" she demanded as she was bound.

He tilted the table to a nearly horizontal position, allowing him to tower over her. "What I want is this planet." He leaned toward her face. "But I'll start with the services of you and your beast."

"You're mad if you think I'll help you!"

"Sasquatch is loyal to you, Shalon, which means—willingly or not—you're going to help me."

 ** _"GRRRRRRRRRRR!"_**

Nedlick turned to the growling beast kneeling on the floor.

"You don't like me, do you?" He enjoyed this opportunity to look down upon the giant. "I can see the thick wheels turning inside that lump of a head of yours." He pointed the control unit at Bigfoot. "Perhaps you think you can snatch this controller away from me before I push the button? But what would happen to Shalon if you did?"

He turned toward his accomplice who stood ready at the control panel.

"Faler, demonstrate what would happen."

"With pleasure." The minion slid a fader on the control panel. Shalon convulsed uncontrollably as electricity arced around her body.

" _Aaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhh!"_

Bigfoot jolted toward her, but Nedlick stopped him with the control unit. The giant reluctantly returned to his knees.

"I think you understand now," Nedlick gloated. "Disobey me, and Shalon suffers. Attempt to **harm** me, and Shalon **dies**."

"It's okay, baby," Shalon cried. "I'm fine. Just do as he says."

"It certainly is, now that we understand each other." Nedlick opened the door and led the way into the cavern as his henchmen prodded Bigfoot to follow. "First, I'll need your help gathering some things for our new base."

As the group left the examination room and closed the security door behind them, Faler stayed behind to guard Shalon.

 _ **We left the laboratory—although it troubled me greatly to leave Shalon alone with the smug little man.**_

"Let's see what this Ominiscanner can really do," muttered Faler as he experimented with the controls. "I know you've been using it to spy on us. But how?"

His clueless fumbling revealed how little he actually knew about its operation.

" _V-E+F=2,"_ said Shalon.

"What?" he wondered aloud. "Is that the password to make this work?"

He didn't look up. He was absorbed with his attempts to operate the panel, so it came as a surprise when Shalon jabbed a sasquatch-sized hypodermic needle into the back of his hand.

"It's the password to make sure I can't be confined in MY OWN LAB, YOU _**PARASITE!"**_

Screaming at the sight of the syringe penetrating his hand, Faler was too distraught to notice Shalon twisting the knob on the time line converter that hung from his own belt. Before he could react, she had rendered him motionless, trapped in his own frozen timeline.

Shalon caught her breath. Faler's face, distorted in mid-scream, stared open-mouthed at his impaled hand.

"I want to remember you that way," she muttered as she left the room.

She found her assistant in the underground corridors. "Gillian! Did you see where they went?"

The blonde scientist didn't understand Shalon's question. Before she could explain, the cavern was plunged into darkness, and emergency lighting flickered to life.

"The power converter!" said Shalon. Nedlick's plan was now clear. His conspirators were operating in accelerated time, using their time line converters to perform days of work within seconds, stealing vital equipment from the colony before anyone could react.

"Nedlick's taking charge! He's using Sasquatch to steal our power source!" She ran in the direction of the Power Chamber. "Warn Apploy!"

 _ **Nedlick had planned well. He wanted the colony's power source so he could start his own colony in a new location.  
**_ _ **He compelled me to tear out the machine he wanted—flooding the lower caves with radiation in the process.  
**_ _ **Those loyal to him looted the entire colony.  
**_ _ **Our crimes were committed within instants. By the time the lights flickered out, we were already gone.**_

Tending to the wounded, Gillian was unprepared for the sight of Shalon emerging pale and weak from the lower caverns.

"Shalon?"

"They took it, Gillian," she gasped. "The lower levels are radioactive. Did you find Apploy?"

The blonde scientist ran to Shalon's side, afraid she might fall. "Yes, but I only have bad news for you," she answered. "Nedlick reported to the mother ship that the colony is contaminated and quarantined. He advised them not to attempt a rescue and destroyed the transmitter. We can't call out now."

Shalon felt weaker and leaned on her assistant for support.

"Faler's missing," Gillian continued. "Nedlick must have come back for him."

Shalon should have expected this. Nedlick wouldn't have left someone behind who might reveal his plan.

"And they have the Omniscanner."

"No," breathed Shalon. "Oh, no." The device had been Shalon's only link to Bigfoot.

She collapsed. Gillian tried to help her to her feet, but Shalon waved her away.

"You don't look well," said Gillian, who recognized the symptoms of radiation poisoning. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes. We need help."

Shalon had only one hope left.

"Find Steve Austin."

 _ **I did not know Shalon had escaped.  
**_ _ **Nedlick exploited my ignorance, threatening to harm her to assure my loyalty.**_

Bigfoot forced his way into a Los Angeles jewel repository.

"That's it, Sasquatch! The emeralds!"

 _ **For days, his pitiless voice filled my head. He forced me to steal . . .**_

Steve Austin confronted Bigfoot at a nuclear facility. "Take it easy. We're friends, remember?"

 _ **And to fight my friend . . .**_

"Sasquatch, attack!" commanded Nedlick. "Or you know what happens to Shalon!"

 _ **And to capture his woman . . .**_

Jaime Sommers, the bionic woman, succumbed to Bigfoot's attack in Mexico.

 _ **And nearly to kill.**_

Steve again faced the sasquatch in the Mexican jungle, and this time Nedlick ordered the earth man destroyed. Bigfoot held a boulder over his head to crush his friend.

"Sasquatch, this is Jaime!" said a new voice in his head. "Nedlick **cannot** hurt Shalon! And he can't hurt **you** anymore, either! I have the control unit!"

Bigfoot hesitated. He remembered the bionic woman whose hair was so much like his mother's.

"Sasquatch, trust me! Please!"

He tossed the boulder aside and helped Steve Austin to his feet.

 _ **It was over.  
**_ _ **I did not have to fight anymore.  
**_ _ **I hurried away.  
**_ _ **I owed someone a hug.**_

The enraged Bigfoot crushed Nedlick nearly to death with his hug. Steve and Jaime could not stop him.

 ** _"RRRRRRRRRRRGGHHH!"_**

 _ **I felt his ribs collapse. Some I heard break. I allowed him to struggle in futility as he had made me struggle.**_

"Stop it!" Steve shouted. "Don't kill him!"

Bigfoot swatted Steve away and returned to his vengeance.

 _ **I did not kill him. But before I let him go, I made sure he would remember not to threaten Shalon again.**_

 _ **And yet, despite my efforts, Shalon was still not well.**_

She lay unconscious within the germ-free environment of the stasis tube in her own examination room. Bigfoot stood by his mother's side, hoping for some sign of improvement.

Apploy and Gillian entered, followed by Steve and Jaime who awaited Apploy's prognosis. He explained that Shalon had refused treatment for her radiation poisoning.

"When she gave Gillian the neotraxin to save you, Col. Austin, her own radiation poisoning brought her to the very threshold of death."

"But you said she wasn't dead," reminded Jaime.

"No, she isn't," agreed Apploy. "Only moments away from it. Much too close to try a cure with the neotraxin alone. Her TLC has been reduced to an extreme slowness. It will remain that way until our mother ship returns. They'll have a much better chance of saving her than we."

"When will your mother ship return?" Steve asked.

"Oh, about a hundred earth years from now."

 _ **But the colonists did NOT stay that long.  
**_ _ **When the transmitter had been repaired, and word of the insurrection had reached our mother ship, we were ordered to leave the colony and return to our asteroid in space until they could collect us.  
**_ _ **The temptation of Earth and her gifts had proven to be too great.**_

 _ **Yet I found, to my wonder, that I didn't want to leave.**_

 _ **On the world of my birth, my clan would no longer remember me, but I felt that the earthborn sasquatches still needed a protector.  
**_ _ **And Steve—my friend—had renewed my faith in this troubled planet.**_

 _ **The colonists allowed me to stay, but only if I gave up my special powers.  
**_ _ **Those gifts came from a technology too dangerous to leave behind on this primitive world.**_

 _ **The transformation happened while I slept. Tiny robots in my blood replaced the metal wires in my body with organic bone and tissue.  
**_ _ **I do not understand how they worked, but they made me compatible with the creatures of earth.**_

 _ **When I awoke from my transformation, the colonists were gone.  
**_ _ **They did not stay to say goodbye.  
**_ _ **They could not even awaken Shalon who slept because of her injury. She will not learn for many years of my decision to stay—when she awakens on the mother ship.  
**_ _ **I hope she does not cry.**_

 _ **But I have fulfilled a part of my dream. I have united as many clans as I could to help protect their dwindling numbers.**_

 _ **I told them I knew of an underground place whose entrance was camouflaged and fortified with defenses no human could breach.  
**_ _ **This time, they trusted me.**_

 _ **I think it was my pretty eyes.**_

 **NOW**

José Mendez opened his eyes after his long, unexpected nap.

He lay on an examination table in an unfamiliar room, covered in blankets. The room contained an odd collection of boxes and discarded furniture. The only familiar sight was the monster who stared at him, and this was somehow comforting.

There was a bandage on his head which still hurt. He touched it and remembered his meeting with the sasquatch. He wondered if he should try to talk to it again.

He had thought no one else was in the room with them, but soon realized he was wrong.

 _ **The boy was resting peacefully, but now he has noticed there is another man in the room.  
**_ _ **One of the boy's eyes sees better in the dark than the other. He has seen the one who watches.**_

The disparity between his two eyes made him doubt what he saw. His left eye saw only a shadow in a chair. His right eye saw in infrared an old man in khaki slacks scowling at him.

 _ **He recognizes the face of the man he was sent to kill.**_

"Mr. Talbot?" he asked.

"Don't call me that," said the old man, annoyed at hearing a name he had grown to hate. "'Talbot' was my cover, but that's been blown."

The man leaned forward into the light, leaving no doubt about his identity.

"My real name is Oscar," he said. "Oscar Goldman." The weathered face that had seemed almost friendly in the photograph was now frozen in icy judgment.

"So you're the man they sent to kill me?"

 _To be continued . . ._

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:** The illuminating story of Oscar Goldman._


	5. Old School

**CHAPTER FIVE: OLD SCHOOL**

* * *

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA  
** **4:51 A.M. PST**

He lay on his back in a dark place and vaguely recalled being carried underground.

José propped himself up on his elbows. He was on a table in a dimly lit examination room filled with old boxes, second-hand shelves, and one shabby looking lounge chair too small for the sasquatch now sitting in it.

A legendary forest monster in an easy chair would usually be the center of his attention, but instead he was focused entirely on Talbot, the old man he had been sent by the OSI to kill.

If his target was at all alarmed by José's presence, he didn't show it. In fact, he'd taken the trouble to introduce himself, using his real name.

Oscar Goldman.

The name meant nothing to José.

The old man seemed to know José's entire mission and should have killed him by now, he realized, yet the man seemed to be waiting for him to reply.

"I have a lot of questions," José said.

"Good," said Oscar. "I hoped you would have questions."

The old man removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief from his trouser pocket.

"If you didn't have questions," he continued, "it would mean that I'd misjudged you. It would mean that I'd made a serious mistake in bringing you here. And that right now one of us would be killing the other." He replaced his glasses. "Questions are good."

"I don't know where to start."

"Also good," said Oscar. "You're wondering if everything you've been told over the last few months has been a lie, and that's not something you want to rush through. Take your time."

Oscar stood up from his director's chair and reached for the coat hanging from it. It seemed he had caught a chill while waiting for his assassin to recover.

José asked his first question.

"Are you bionic?"

"Hah!"

Oscar's reaction puzzled José. Why was this funny?

"Didn't expect that one," Oscar admitted. "No, I'm not bionic."

"Bigfoot is real?"

"Yes." Oscar zipped his coat. "Now back up a second. Who told you I was bionic?"

"No one. Not exactly. But Spencer said you'd be dangerous."

"Oh." Oscar reached for a walking stick that had been propped against a nearby crate next to his chair. "Yeah, that makes sense. I am. Not to you, though. As targets go, I move pretty slow."

For a moment, José thought the stick might be a weapon in his hand, but instead the man leaned on it for support. Not only was he not bionic, he didn't seem very steady on his feet.

"Then why . . ."

Oscar turned toward the younger man with a stare that demanded a response. "Why what?"

"Nothing." José didn't know how many details of his mission his interrogator knew, but he wasn't about to volunteer any more.

Oscar took a step closer. He gripped the walking stick like a wizard's staff, granting him a look of arcane authority that was at odds with his khaki slacks and zippered coat.

"Why is the first test of your powers to kill an old man who can hardly defend himself against a normal man, much less an assassin with bionic strength?" asked Oscar.

The silence confirmed his suspicion.

"I admit, that's a tough one," Oscar continued. "Unless you understand how Eli Spencer thinks."

Spencer was director of the Office of Scientific Intervention and José's boss.

"By now, your prowess with your new bionic powers has already been tested," said Oscar as he ambled back to his chair. "You're a finely calibrated fighting machine. Your skill isn't in question." He put down the stick and sat. "Your loyalty is. They sent you to make sure you'd stay loyal."

"No, that doesn't make sense," José insisted. "Why put me on a kill mission if they weren't sure I would do it? It's too big a risk."

"Not for them." Oscar put his hands in his coat pockets. "They're good at this. If I'd been in my cabin last night, you would've killed me, and they'd have their assassin."

Oscar could see José's skepticism.

"Look at it this way. Killing someone is an act that—once committed—isn't easy to back away from. I'm talking about your ethics now. Once you've used your fantastic power to kill a harmless old man, any ethical conflicts you'd encounter in the future would seem small by comparison. It's like teaching you to swim by pushing you in the deep end. It's not nice, but it's faster."

José sat up on the edge of the exam table. "I still don't buy it."

"You don't want to think that you could be manipulated that easily," said Oscar. "No one does. Like I said, they're **good** at this. You hungry?"

"What?" The randomness of the question startled him. "No."

"Well, I am." Oscar stood again. "I haven't had breakfast, and my body's not fueled by atomic batteries like yours. If you're up for a walk, I'll take you to my tent and cook us up something."

Bigfoot rose and offered the man an arm for support, but Oscar waved him away. The giant instead moved toward the exit and beckoned José to follow.

"Bigfoot will lead the way," said Oscar. "I still get lost in these tunnels."

The giant led them into a subterranean passage softly illuminated by wall-mounted hexagon-shaped panels at regular intervals. The cave was populated by small groups of sasquatches going about their own private affairs. The place might have been a wild cave once, but everywhere was evidence that it had been extensively modified for some other purpose.

However the most puzzling thing about the cave was the presence of Oscar himself. He should have been angry or defensive or freaking the hell out—not getting breakfast for the man intent on killing him.

José put his bionic eye into record mode. No one was going to believe him if he didn't record it.

"What is this place?"

"Officially, it doesn't exist." Oscar followed a few steps behind him. "Unofficially, it's been called the 'San Angelo Complex.' But you could call it the Secret Sasquatch City. The creatures who live here don't have a name for it. They call it home."

"Bigfoot built it?"

"No."

"The OSI built it?"

"I wouldn't bring you here if the OSI had anything to do with it."

"Then who did?"

"That question should wait. You need to chew before you can swallow. You're still chewing on the reality of bionic men and Bigfoot, and there are bigger bites to come."

An adult sasquatch passed them carrying what looked like a younger version of himself on his back. Father and son stared inquisitively at the human visitors as they passed.

"I can tell you this place is old," Oscar continued. "When its builders abandoned it, Bigfoot repurposed it because his people needed it."

"When you say Bigfoot—"

"I'm referring to the big guy who brought you here." The giant plodded ahead of them, taking care not to outpace Oscar who followed José. "He's the guardian, the protector. He'll also answer to the name 'Sasquatch'—but so do the others who live here, so that's a bit confusing."

A group of sasquatch children ran in the other direction. One of them paused to stare at a glowing hexagon on the wall, pressing his hands experimentally against the illuminating panel.

"They use technology?"

"The sasquatches don't have much use for it, but Bigfoot's spent more time among humans than the others, so he maintains a few conveniences—like lights and running water. And he has a translating device that he uses to communicate. You may have noticed Bigfoot is kind of a celebrity on the Internet."

They entered a large chamber that had been preserved in its natural state. Some bench-sized stones had been arranged in a small circle, and Oscar's tent was just outside it.

"The ones who built this place took the rest of their technology with them when they left. This sanctuary is a secret place that only a handful of humans have ever seen, and most of those who have are long dead."

Bigfoot paused so Oscar could catch up. "Here's my tent," said the man, stooping under the flap. "Stay here. I'll go get breakfast."

José stood outside the tent, feeling a bit foolish for following his assigned target around like a puppy. He assured himself that he was gathering intelligence about his enemy and not just abandoning his senses.

Bigfoot removed one of the larger hexagonal panels from the cave wall. It continued to glow as he placed it across a pair of flat rocks in the middle of the stone circle, creating a makeshift table that doubled as a light source.

Inside the tent, beyond José's view, Oscar gathered breakfast items from his cooler. "The sasquatch community's survival depends on keeping this place a secret," he said. "Bringing you here is a huge risk for them."

Oscar stuck his hand through the tent flap. It held a frying pan which José took.

"They only did it because Bigfoot trusts me," Oscar continued, "so if you make trouble, it will go badly for both of us."

Oscar took the gun out of his coat pocket and checked the clip. "Mind you, I'm only risking my life, but Bigfoot is risking a lot more." He put the gun back in his pocket, assured that it was fully loaded. "If you don't appreciate that, we're going to have a problem."

Oscar Goldman understood the value of a contingency plan. He knew better than anyone how dangerous a bionic man could be, and he'd had forty years to think about how to kill one.

 **COLORADO SPRINGS  
** **6:26 A.M.**

It was dark in California, but the sun was rising in Colorado.

In her apartment, Dr. Jessie Goodwin sat transfixed by her laptop whose screen displayed the unlikely medical history of Jaime Sommers.

The thought had yet to fully settle within her mind.

 _There was a bionic woman._

After Dr. Rudy Wells and his team succeeded in creating the world's first bionic woman in 1975, the patient unexpectedly suffered bionic rejection syndrome and died on the operating table. However she miraculously recovered after a colleague—Dr. Michael Marchetti—tried an untested cryogenic procedure combined with the application of an experimental immunity inhibitor called ferroxidrine.

The gamble saved her life.

But Dr. Wells recommended that the experimental drug not be used again until its side effects were better understood. He ordered further testing. The final report on the drug was issued in 1985. Ferroxidrine was effective, but when combined with certain other drugs, caused memory loss.

The two words made Jessie pause. _Memory loss._ José had received ferroxidrine and had also suffered memory loss.

 _Jaime Sommers never completely recovered her memories._

Wells ordered the drug shelved—but Dr. Endo suddenly took interest in it in 2002. He ordered that the drug be given to all future bionic test subjects—to prevent "bionic rejection."

Endo's instructions to his medical staff made no mention of memory loss or any other side effects from the drug—a fact which raised more questions.

 _Why had Dr. Wells' contributions to the bionics program been buried by the OSI?_

 _Was Endo lying when he told José his amnesia was the result of trauma?_

 _How many "test subjects" had there been since Endo approved the drug in 2002?_

 **THE SECRET SASQUATCH CITY  
** **(FORMERLY THE SAN ANGELO COMPLEX)**

"Where do sasquatches get bacon?"

The smell wafted from Oscar's portable grill, reminding José of how little he knew about Bigfoot's legend. Rumors on the Internet differed wildly on details about the creature, but all websites agreed that sasquatches love bacon.

"Don't believe what you read on the Internet. This sample came from my fridge." Oscar scooped the strips from the pan onto a plate. "When I sent Bigfoot to intercept you, I had him pick up some supplies from my kitchen. You want juice? It's still cold."

José was about to share breakfast with a mythic American folk legend and a retired spy with experience as a campfire chef. The breakfast table itself was an eerie glowing hexagon propped on a couple of rocks. José's sense of normalcy had gone into full retreat.

He looked at the bacon in front of him—arranged on a paper plate next to scrambled eggs—and considered the unlikely chef who'd made it.

Oscar couldn't have had much warning that the OSI was coming for him, yet he had obviously been prepared. He must have had a bag pre-packed with camping supplies and personal items just in case he needed to disappear.

"Why are you doing this for me?" asked José. "Why take this kind of risk?"

"Now you're asking the right questions. Good." Oscar pushed a carton of juice in José's direction. "I'm taking this risk because I have a hunch about you."

"You don't even know me."

"I spent fifty years ferreting out secrets for the government." Oscar pointed a spatula at him. "Don't tell me what I know."

Bigfoot was too distracted to listen to the two humans. He dangled a piece of bacon playfully over his open mouth before biting it, gnashing it with crooked teeth and smiling with childlike satisfaction.

Oscar sat down with his own plate.

"I have—" He stopped himself. His shoulders sank a little, as though he were dealing with a new reality he hadn't quite accepted.

"I **had** —a source in the OSI. When my contact failed to report, I suspected the worst. My fears were confirmed when I found the police report online. And I knew that I'd be the next target."

José studied the man who now stared somberly at the table.

"You've been keeping tabs on me," said José.

"Yes, for some time. I understand people. I survived at the OSI as long as I did because I knew who to trust."

Oscar poured himself some juice.

"You're not some blank slate like Eli Spencer thinks you are. You're smart. You're curious. You ask the right kind of questions. Those are qualities I wanted in my agents when I was in charge. What I don't know is how deeply Spencer and his boys have programmed you. So I'm going to ask you once, and I want a real answer."

Oscar leaned forward seriously.

"Do you trust me?"

Oscar's question echoed within the chamber. Bigfoot stopped chewing. It wasn't like humans to be this quiet for this long.

"I still don't know who you are," José admitted.

Oscar's reputation had been built on a foundation of trust. In Washington, D.C.—a town where lies are traded like currency—congressmen and foreign diplomats confided in him because everyone believed Oscar Goldman was a man to trust.

He never anticipated the OSI would send someone who had never heard of him.

 _Be very, very sure,_ he warned himself. _If you tell him anything, you have to tell him everything._

Oscar's breakfast was on the plate, warm and ready to eat. He pushed it away.

"Okay. Here's a history lesson." He put his elbows on the table. "The Office of Scientific Operations began as a government initiative to explore new technologies in defense of the homeland. Its original emphasis was robotics, but its mandate quickly grew. Despite generous taxpayer funding, the early robotics program met with only limited success—which frustrated the hell out of the division's supervisor, a man named Oliver Spencer."

"Spencer?" asked José.

"Yes, your boss's father," confirmed Oscar. "Eli Spencer's thinking isn't much different from Oliver's, and I got to know Oliver pretty well during those years. As I was saying, Oliver's interest was in robots, but the early robotics program was problematic."

 **O.S.O. ROBOTICS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.  
** **JUNE 21, 1969**

Assisted by a cane, Oliver Spencer ambled across the laboratory floor toward the prototype. The robot on the dais was designed to pass for a human being, but the robot was as yet incomplete, lacking clothes, skin, or a face. More than anything, it now looked like a hi-tech mannequin.

The closer Oliver got to it, however, the less it looked like the schematics he had approved. Even with the front panel removed, he could tell that the hips were wider and the waist was narrower than in the plan. With the front panel installed, the chest would be distractingly busty.

"Is **this** the prototype we're showing the Secretary next week?" he asked.

"It is," confirmed Parker, a scientist with an authoritative beard the color of his lab coat.

"Why does it look so . . . feminine?"

The question had been overheard by the project chief who had just entered the room.

"Isn't it obvious?" said Dr. Franklin in the precise and authoritative cadence of a Harvard professor. "If all you want is brute strength, Mr. Spencer, the form is immaterial. But if your design is intended for guile and subterfuge, the robot must logically take the form of a woman. Don't you agree?"

Oliver ground his teeth. He knew Franklin's skill with robotics was unsurpassed. He just wondered how he was going to spin the idea of a sexy robot to the State Department.

 **NOW**

"Oliver was not a good judge of people," Oscar explained. "Dr. Franklin, his pick for chief of the robotics division, was proof of that. Franklin's overblown ego could only be matched by his unyielding hatred of the opposite sex. Oliver tolerated Franklin's misogyny to advance the robotics program, but Franklin's cooperation was always conditional upon getting the funding he wanted for his real passion—a scheme to weaponize the weather."

"The weather?" José scoffed. He tried to imagine the weather-controlling misogynist building a harem of lady robots. "He never got kissed. Was that it?"

"That was a popular theory."

As Oscar talked, another sasquatch resident silently appeared at the entrance of the chamber. José couldn't be sure how long it had been there before being noticed. Bigfoot spotted the creature signaling to him, so he rose to his big feet and followed the other sasquatch away without a sound.

Oscar continued his story, seeming not to notice Bigfoot's departure.

"Oliver couldn't admit that hiring Franklin was a mistake, so ultimately, it fell to me to blow the whistle on all the money Franklin wasted on his side project. Franklin was fired, and the robotics division fell out of favor with the State Department. Luckily for me, that freed up the money I needed for my bionics program, and I already had the right man spearheading that project."

Oscar took off his glasses, remembering one of his prouder moments.

"Rudy Wells was unique, a genius who'd mastered multiple fields, and the answer to my prayers. He had groundbreaking theories for interfacing electronics with the body's own nervous system—to create artificial limbs operated by thought alone. I gave him the opportunity to put his theories to the test. But our superiors expected results. Our first trial would be our last if it didn't go well.

"I needn't have been so worried."

 **O.S.O. MEDICAL CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.  
** **FEBRUARY 23, 1971**

Oscar caught Rudy's attention in the corridor. "How's the patient?"

It wasn't the first time Oscar had asked, but this time Rudy had an update for him. "He's awake. Physically he's doing well, but mentally—only time will tell. Do you want to meet him?"

"Absolutely. Our future depends on him now."

Oscar knew that victims of traumatic stress are prone to mood swings during recovery, especially when they're still coming to grips with a new handicap, but he was relieved to see that the patient was in good spirits.

"There he is," said Rudy proudly. "History's first cyborg."

"I never liked that word," said Oscar. "Nobody with a face like that should be called a cyborg. He's **bionic**."

The patient wagged its tail and barked.

"Max the bionic dog," greeted Oscar as he approached the recovery table. "Who's a good boy?"

The German shepherd's legs remained bandaged and his neck was adorned by a stainless steel cone custom-made to prevent bionic jaws from pulling out stitches. He couldn't yet stand on his new legs, but he raised his head eagerly and licked Oscar's face when he leaned close enough.

"He likes you," said Rudy.

"I like you, too, fella!" Oscar scratched the back of the dog's neck and remembered something he'd heard Harry Truman say.

"Looks like I finally have a friend in Washington."

 **TWO MONTHS LATER**

Oscar was shocked when Rudy abruptly resigned from the O.S.O. just as his success with the bionic prototype was being lauded by their superiors as a milestone in medicine.

The doctor packed personal items into a briefcase, knowing that his staff was doing the same with their belongings in the lab down the hall.

"I've accepted NASA's offer to work on Moonshot XYZ—a sister project to the Apollo program," he told Oscar. "My staff and I will be assessing the medical effects of long term space travel on astronauts."

"NASA?" Oscar was still in denial. "Rudy, we need you here. Is it the money?"

"No, it's the **O.S.O.** ," Rudy said. "My staff doesn't want its work being used for 'black ops.' None of us want to be remembered as assassins for the government."

"That's not what the O.S.O. does."

"Are you sure? I've already heard the brass whispering about how to 'weaponize' the dog." Rudy snapped the briefcase shut. "The dog, Oscar! That's not why we worked so hard on Max."

Oscar stood in the doorway and watched his freind walk away, briefcase in hand.

 **NOW**

"So Rudy left us for NASA. And my fledgling bionics program began to flounder.

"Meanwhile, Oliver Spencer was clearing a path to get himself promoted—with help from a mysterious benefactor in a high place. It's unfortunate that some of the most influential people in Washington are those who are never elected and whose names the public never knows.

"One of those figures was the mysterious Mrs. McKay. She was highly placed within the State Department—and had a peculiar interest in Oliver's career. I should have been suspicious when Oliver was suddenly being friendly to my division. He knew that he needed to tout some accomplishments to get the promotion he wanted—so he touted **mine** , taking credit for all my work with the tacit approval of Mrs. McKay.

"Before I knew what was going on, Oliver was my boss, and his mysterious benefactor was pulling our strings from the shadows. Oliver took me off the bionics program and stuck me with a series of low-priority projects just to keep me out of his way—like assessing the intelligence-gathering capabilities of high-altitude aircraft.

"As luck would have it, that was the assignment that gave me a chance to catch up with my old friend."

 **EDWARDS AFB, CALIFORNIA  
** **JANUARY 11, 1973**

"There it is, Oscar. The HL-10!"

From their perspective in the control tower, Rudy and Oscar had a perfect view of the lifting body prototype being towed across the tarmac. Rudy hadn't designed the plane himself, but he understood its importance and acknowledged that it was the star of the moment.

"We hope the wingless design will give it the structural integrity needed to re-enter earth's atmosphere from the edge of space," he elaborated, "but I don't think it's going to be the spy craft you're looking for."

Oscar turned away from the observation window. "Maybe I just wanted an excuse to talk to you."

"I miss you, too, Oscar," Rudy admitted, "but I haven't changed my mind. We've been doing important work here over the last twenty months. The data from these flights will help NASA design a reusable spacecraft that can land on a runway instead of the ocean. Such a craft could shuttle people and equipment quickly and efficiently into space."

"A shuttle to space?" Oscar turned back to the wedge-shaped craft below him. "Sounds promising, but I like wings on my planes. Glad I'm not the pilot."

"No worries there. Steve Austin's the best in the world."

"You're makin' me blush, Rudy," said the man himself as he walked in the door.

Both turned to see Steve Austin, astronaut and test pilot, enter the control room with a motorcycle helmet under one arm. Under his bomber jacket, his shirt was tucked neatly into fashionably tight pants, and a toothpick jutted defiantly from his mouth.

"Steve!" Rudy gestured for him to join them. "Meet my friend Oscar Goldman from the O.S.O. He's here to observe tomorrow's flight."

Steve extended his hand. "Mr. Goldman."

"Call me Oscar."

One was a celebrity astronaut. The other was a bureaucrat in a suit. As their hands shook, neither man understood how their lives were about to become linked.

 **THE NEXT DAY**

The control tower was full of experts in a range of fields, each focused on the streams of data coming from the prototype now being ferried into the sky. As Rudy's VIP guest, Oscar had to remind himself that this was a NASA operation, so his role today was to observe, not to interfere.

Radar showed the progress of the B52 that carried the smaller craft, but most of the eyes in the tower were trained on the vapor trail in the sky. Steve Austin was strapped into the prototype now being carried under the larger craft's wing.

"Lighting rods are armed," crackled the voice of the B52 pilot. "Switch is on. Here comes the throttle. Circuit breakers in."

In the air, the HL-10 separated according to plan. "We have separation."

"Roger," Steve acknowledged.

"Inboard and outboards are on," said the NASA flight controller. "Come a-port with the side stick."

In the sky, four vapor trails left by the B52's engines veered to the right while a new vapor trail from the HL-10 forged ahead alone.

Oscar grew tense as the tower became quiet, but if the technicians felt nervous, they didn't show it. Steve's craft was on its planned trajectory toward a landing on the desert floor of Rogers Dry Lake.

An alarm sounded in the tower.

"Oscar?" called Steve. "I've got a blowout—vapor three!"

Oscar was confused, not knowing that "Oscar"—in this case—was the pilots' designation for the control tower. He keyed a microphone in the tower and replied, "Mission Control. Steve, what is it? What's wrong?"

"I was hoping you could tell me!"

"Get your pitch to zero," urged the flight controller.

"Pitch is out! I can't hold altitude!"

The HL-10 was too slow and far short of the landing strip. Oscar saw the craft oscillate wildly as the flight controller called for emergency procedures.

"Direction alpha hold is off. Try trajectory emergency—"

"Flight con, I can't hold it! She's breaking up! She's brea—"

The prototype hit the dry lake bed at 250 miles per hour and flipped six times, shedding its protective skin and scattering pieces of itself and its pilot across the desert floor.

 **NOW**

"The crash would have killed a lesser man—and it might have killed Steve had it not been for Rudy's skill as a surgeon. But at what cost? Rudy was Steve's doctor and friend. As a friend, he wondered if the best thing for Steve might be to let him die. Yet despite his doubts, he never relented in his efforts to keep his patient alive.

"And in that tragedy, I saw an opportunity—if I acted quickly enough. I knew Oliver Spencer was already announcing the next phase of our bionics research—the first human trial."

 **WILSHIRE FEDERAL BUILDING, LOS ANGELES  
** **JANUARY 12, 1973**

The meeting had been set for D.C., but Mrs. McKay requested that it be moved to the west coast so she could personally brief the President in his San Clemente home immediately afterward. Oliver never refused a request from Mrs. McKay.

Far from the beltway, six Washington elites sat around a conference table and listened while Oliver made his best pitch.

"We estimate the cost to be roughly 6 million dollars to establish the facilities," he explained, "and half a million to a million dollars a year thereafter to sustain those facilities and maintain the operation."

"That's for one prototype?" asked the woman from the budget office.

"We have no need of more than one until we work out the bugs."

"Where will you get the raw materials, Oliver?" asked a skeptical White House staffer. "Are you going to ask for volunteers?"

"No, no. Accidents happen all the time. We'll just start with scrap."

"We won't have to," said Oscar as he strode into the room with an armful of documents.

"You're late, Oscar," said Mrs. McKay.

Oscar wasn't late. He hadn't been invited—or told about the meeting. In fact, Oliver wondered how on earth Oscar had found them on the opposite coast from where the meeting had originally been meant to be.

"My apologies, Mrs. McKay," said Oscar. "I came here straight from the hospital."

He produced an 8x10 photograph of the celebrity astronaut and splayed it dramatically on the table before anyone could ask why.

"I was just about to say that we don't need to work with scrap. We already have an ideal candidate for the trial. Steve Austin.'

"The astronaut?" Oliver asked. "A man barely alive?"

"We all saw the crash on the news," informed Mrs. McKay.

Oliver now imagined the different ways he could fire his meddling subordinate but kept his mouth shut. He didn't dare admit how much he needed Oscar. His contacts included Senator Ed Hill, head of the Appropriations Committee. Without Oscar's involvement, the six million dollars they needed right away would be tied up in Congress for months.

Oscar was in his element. While Oliver Spencer knew the resumes of everyone in the room, Oscar Goldman also knew the names of their spouses, their children, their pets and their favorite sports teams. He had gotten to know each of them enough to understand not just who they were, but what motivated them. Oliver, by comparison, preferred robots to people.

"Trust me," assured Oscar. "Col. Austin is the right candidate. As an Air Force officer and a celebrated astronaut, he's already proven that he's one of the most capable men alive. And his personal physician is someone we already know—Rudy Wells—the same man who made the first prototype."

"First prototype?" asked the White House staffer.

"Surely you remember?" Oscar displayed a second photograph on the table. This one featured the smiling faces of Rudy Wells and Max the dog. The photo was heart-breakingly adorable.

"Oh, yes! The bionic dog," recalled Mrs. McKay.

The woman from the budget office said, "Aw, he's a cutie!"

Although Oliver had never met Rudy Wells, he had kept a file on him—as he did with everyone he didn't like. "As you know," Oliver reminded, "Dr. Wells is no longer with the O.S.O."

Mrs. McKay asked, "Could he be convinced to come back?"

"Ifwe pick Colonel Austin for the trial, Rudy will **insist** on coming with him," Oscar predicted. "If we act now, we can have them both."

He had laid out the facts of the argument, and he had motivated them. Now he needed to close the deal.

"Mrs. McKay . . . Gentlemen . . ."

Oscar removed his glasses.

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man."

Oscar saw their faces and sensed the political wind shifting to his favor.

"Better than he was before . . ."

 **NOW**

"Better, faster, stronger," José recalled. "I think I've heard this part."

"No one said anything," continued Oscar. "They were waiting to hear what Mrs. McKay would say."

 **THEN**

"Oliver, you should make arrangements for Wells in your Colorado facility."

"Thank you, madam," said Oscar as he gathered his things. "I'll go back to the hospital to talk to Rudy."

"No, you're taking the next plane back to Washington," corrected Oliver. "You need to talk to your friend the senator. I'll handle Wells myself."

"I think it'd be better if I—"

"I said I'll **do** it, Goldman!"

Oscar had pushed his luck as far as he dared. Now he could only hope that Oliver didn't foul things up at the hospital.

 **ANTELOPE VALLEY HOSPITAL, PALMDALE, CA**

Rudy Wells had been in surgery for thirty straight hours when he informally briefed the O.S.O. director on Steve's condition. Oliver nodded and instructed the doctor to "just keep him alive."

The patient had stabilized, but Rudy knew it would be hours before he could actually relax. He shuffled into the hospital's break room to begin the process of winding down.

Oliver was waiting for him. He congratulated Rudy for his effort and made a once-in-a-lifetime offer to make medical history.

"Are you serious?" Oliver had never expressed an interest in Rudy's work before and had every reason to believe the man hated him.

Oliver didn't raise an eyebrow.

"Steve Austin isn't **anyone** ," Rudy continued. "Of all the men I know, he's the last I'd want to live the way he is now."

"Well, then you're his only hope. If you can't do it, then nobody can."

"Maybe this is none of my business, but what happens after he's been equipped with all these new parts?"

"We have work for him. Certain jobs where the use of ships, planes, a multiplicity of personnel, would be inappropriate—and where the use of a so-called 'normal' agent would be ineffective. And that's where you come in, doctor. We feel that an agent, as you propose, who is part machine and part human, would be the best compromise at this particular time."

Rudy's silent skepticism was lost on Oliver, who continued unabated.

"He would work alone, of course. And to the extent that he is machinery, he would be much more durable due to the fact that you could replace the parts that perhaps might become damaged."

"Supposing he doesn't want to do that kind of work?"

"You don't really know what kind of work we do, doctor."

"Espionage," hazarded Rudy. "Sabotage. Assassination."

Oliver rose authoritatively, assisted by his cane. "Don't make a decision for Mr. Austin based on hearsay or upon your own personal prejudice, doctor."

Rudy sighed as he considered the lack of options. "Forgive me if my anxiety is showing."

"Yes, well, I'm sure you'll work it out, doctor." Oliver hobbled toward the exit and paused as if he had just remembered a trivial detail. "Oh, we're transferring Steve Austin to our research center in Colorado. You'll forgive me if I've taken the liberty of making accommodations for you and your staff on the same plane. We leave within the hour."

 **NOW**

"It wasn't the way I would have done it, but it worked," Oscar admitted. "Rudy came back so Steve could have the best possible chance of returning to a normal life.

"Oliver Spencer was a complicated man, and it took me years to understand his way of thinking. His version of the bionics program was radically different from mine.

"In his version, bionic agents would have been expendable, taking risks no sane man would knowingly accept. High fatality rates were projected. When an agent died, the failure would be analyzed and corrected in the next 'test subject.' The higher the casualty rate, the faster the technology would advance. That's how he justified the enormous risks.

"To most, such a policy would be unthinkable. Rudy called it obscene. Oliver justified it by saying the test subjects would likely have died without our help."

Oscar Goldman now grew quiet.

José wondered if the old man had lost his place in the story. When Oscar spoke again, his voice was softer, more reflective.

"Strange as it sounds, Oliver had a sentimental side, but I only saw it once. He was in my office. He was drunk. He told me about his daughter—confined to a wheelchair. He said he was trying to create a technology that would allow her to walk again."

Oscar still remembered the photograph Oliver had shown him of the teenage girl with the ponytail. Then he glanced at José and returned to the story.

"Whatever his motivation, it didn't work. Steve was sent into the Middle East on a suicide mission and disappointed his boss by surviving it.

"Shortly afterwards, Oliver was overtaken by current events. The Watergate scandal bubbled over. The public demanded accountability in government. The shadier figures in the administration—like Mrs. McKay—opted to resign rather than face the scrutiny that was sure to come.

"Oliver found himself reassigned to the robotics division, and I became the new director of the O.S.O.—with the understanding that I would bring the appearance of more transparency to the agency.

"I began by changing the O.S.O.'s name. The 'operations' in our old name sounded too much like 'black ops.' The 'Office of Scientific **Intelligence** ' sounded more in line with my interpretation of our mandate.

"And in the years that followed, Steve Austin became our most valuable agent. There have been other bionic men since, but none better. In the service of his country, he traveled the world, captured spies, thwarted terrorists, wrestled sharks, outsmarted supercomputers, battled robots, and dismantled more than one death probe."

"Death probe?" José still hadn't decided whether to believe any of this. "You're saying death probes are a thing?"

"No," said Oscar. "I'm saying they're not. Not anymore. The point is, Steve Austin was the best investment of six million dollars our country ever made. And he was my pal.

"I directed the OSI for 27 years. Using Steve as my eyes, Rudy as my brain, and other agents with rare talents, we gathered secrets in the name of national security and occasionally saved the world. Frequently I sent them into harm's way, but each time, I made sure they **knew** the risks. I never had reason to regret that. So to answer to your question . . ."

Oscar leaned forward.

" **T** **hat's** who I am. Now I ask you again, do you trust me?"

"I want to," said José. "I want to believe that you were the head of the most secretive spy agency in the world, but that's kind of hard to reconcile with the old man I find here hiding in this cave."

"Tell me, José," said Oscar, attempting a different tactic. "When Spencer and his subordinates were showering you with money, attention and 'perks,' did it never occur to you that you were being lied to?"

"More than once," José admitted, "but it would help me believe you if I could confirm any of what you're saying."

Oscar noticed José was looking _toward_ him, but not _at_ him.

"You've been trying to 'Google' me, haven't you?" said Oscar. "With that eye of yours. You're doing it right now."

It was true. José's bionic eye saw Oscar, but superimposed over that inquisitive stare was a message that said: YOU ARE NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET.

"It won't work in here," said Oscar. "I'm jamming your Wi-Fi. If the signal from your eye gets out, your 'friends' will find us in a heartbeat."

"My 'friends' must have other ways to find me—even here."

"That's being handled."

"Is that where Bigfoot went? To 'handle' my friends?" José stood up, convinced that he'd been delayed too long. "If that's the case, he's in over his head."

"Bigfoot knows what he's doing."

"But he doesn't know what the **O.S.I.** can do!"

"Neither do _**you! SIT DOWN!"**_

José recognized that tone of voice and wondered which branch of the military had taught it to Oscar. The friendly storyteller was gone now, replaced by the icy figure of judgment José saw upon his awakening.

He sat down.

"For what you say to be true," José began slowly, "if the OSI has been using bionic agents in the field for forty years without telling the public—or me—then everyone who had contact with me during my recovery would have to be in on the cover up."

"Not necessarily," said Oscar. "The O.S.I. can compartmentalize information when it needs to. Each member of your medical team would have a different clearance level and be privy to a different part of the secret, but only a few would know the big picture."

José tried to piece together the threads of Oscar's argument. "It would explain a few things," he admitted. "Like those two nurses, Amber and April. They seemed awfully . . ."

"Accessible?"

José smiled as he pictured the pretty nurses in his mind. "I could tell Amber wasn't for real. April, though . . . She seemed to really like me. I sort of gave her the brush off when she got too close. I hope she's not mad about that."

Oscar's brows furrowed, as if José had just said something in poor taste. He removed his glasses and stared at them in his hand for a long time. It was as if a puzzle in his head had just solved itself.

"I'm sorry," said Oscar at last, still staring at his glasses. "I really am. I assumed you already knew."

José sensed trouble. "April **doesn't** like me?"

"April's dead."

Bionic ear or not, José was certain he must have misheard. Or it was a trick. It was part of a mind game that old spies use to manipulate the unwary.

"It was a car accident," Oscar said, "if you believe the police report."

"But . . . I just saw her."

"It happened right after she left your place the night before last."

"No . . ."

Oscar put his glasses back on and stared with a profound sadness.

"April was my contact."

For José, it was the final piece of the puzzle—the one he needed to make the others fit. It explained perfectly how Oscar knew so much about him.

He believed Oscar's story. All of it, even the death probes.

And of course, April _had_ been more sincere, more earnest, in trying to connect with him—because she was trying to earn his _trust_ —and determine if he could be _trusted_ as well.

José had failed her. He'd brushed her off because he'd had a crush on Jessie, the hot doctor. April's death was his fault.

Never again, he decided.

He rose to his feet.

"Where are you going?" demanded Oscar.

"Out."

"The hell you are!"

"I can't stay!"

"You _**have**_ to! _**SIT DOWN!"**_

A pair of sasquatches converged at the entrance of the chamber to see what the shouting was about—and to see whether the humans would actually come to blows.

"Don't you see?" José asked. "Those O.S.I. guys are gonna kill Bigfoot—like they did April!"

José turned and ran toward the exit with an abruptness that startled the sasquatches in his path.

" _ **Stop him!"**_ shouted Oscar. _**"DON'T LET HIM LEAVE!"**_

 _To be continued . . ._

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:** Sasquatch fight!_


	6. The Rabbit Hole

**CHAPTER SIX:** **THE RABBIT HOLE**

* * *

 _ **My name is José Mendez. I was a soldier in Afghanistan. After that I was an agent for the O.S.I. Now I don't know what I am.**_

"Stop him! Don't let him leave!"

 _ **Other than that guy getting tackled.**_

A pair of sasquatches moved to block José's path to the cave's exit.

José pushed the creatures out of his way, but a third seemed to appear from nowhere and head-butted him in the chest. This gave the other two time to regroup and tackle him from behind.

 _ **I'm not angry at the sasquatches.  
**_ _ **Actually . . . I kind of like them.  
**_ _ **I'm really upset because of a woman.**_

José tried to squirm out of the grips of the larger creatures without hurting them. If he got too rough, they might try to bite.

 _ **Her name was April.  
**_ _ **She was beautiful. Smart. Kind. She liked me.  
**_ _ **I'm the reason she's dead. I won't let that happen again.**_

The sasquatches struggled for leverage as José maneuvered himself onto his stomach. One of the creatures tried to trap him in a half-nelson. José could feel its breath on his ear. The other two had no luck trying to pin down his bionic limbs and instead were piling onto his back, trying to maximize their weight advantage.

 _ **Somehow, I can still hear Oscar.**_

"Stop it, José! You're only making this worse!"

 _ **Damn bionic ear. I'm not in a listening mood.**_

 **ELSEWHERE,  
** **BUT WITHIN THE SAME FOREST**

The San Madrian Mountains had long been famous as a Bigfoot hot spot.

Followers of certain internet websites who possessed the fortitude to wander beyond the service range their smartphones would sometimes make their way into the San Madrians hoping for a glimpse of the legendary Bigfoot. Often they would stop at the gift shop in San Angelo to buy a sasquatch map or a stuffed Bigfoot for their kids. Occasionally a true believer would bring back a blurry photograph or a piece of unsteady video and ask the proprietor of the shop what he thought about it.

"Yep, that's our Nick," would be the reply.

Nick Borglund, webmaster of , was a freelance web designer and well-known prankster. He made the front page of the local paper after a team of sasquatch researchers had been forced to admit that several beasts they were tracking in the area were actually him.

Nick's original sasquatch costume was confiscated by the sheriff after complaints that he was using it to frighten local motorists, but he didn't mind. He had more costumes. The latest had weights in its feet (all the better for making footprints) and made a satisfying clomping sound when he walked through the living room of his isolated cabin home.

He happened to be wearing the costume when there was a knock on his front door.

He snickered to himself as he reached for his mask which blended seamlessly with his fur suit.

He shuffled to the door, avoiding the clomping.

He paused silently to make sure his visitor was still there, then swung the door dramatically open with outstretched arms.

" _ **RRRAAAGGGHHH!"**_ he cried.

The 700-pound, eight-foot-tall shaggy visitor on Nick's doorstep had enormously big feet (which were real) and a very puzzled expression. He said nothing to explain himself, but the look of disappointment on his face suggested he was a bit offended by the disappointingly tiny man who greeted him.

 **THE SASQUATCH SANCTUARY  
** **(FORMERLY THE SAN ANGELO COMPLEX)**

Beneath the wrestling sasquatches that hoped to stop him, José leveraged his knee underneath his chest, giving himself a way to push against the cave floor. He used that leverage to launch himself suddenly upright, shrugging off his attackers, flinging them into the walls.

He ran, but didn't know _where_ he ran. He'd been unconscious when they'd brought him underground, so he ran without a plan or a strategy, just an unyielding imperative to find an exit.

"Wait!" Oscar's voice echoed from somewhere behind him, too faintly to be heard by a normal man, but more than loud enough for a bionic ear. "I know you can hear me!"

He ignored the sound. He ran into a chamber where sasquatch children were playing. A startled mother snatched her child out of his path as José steered around her, creating confusion and consternation in his wake.

"Listen to me with that ear of yours! You're not **ready** to leave yet!"

His frantic explorations led him to multiple dead ends that forced him to reverse directions. As he ran, numerous startled sasquatch faces blurred past him that he sought to avoid. Many faces he saw more than once. He wanted to apologize but didn't trust himself to slow down.

"You don't know what's going on!"

José arrived at a juncture of several pathways. One tunnel was stranger than the rest, glowing like the inside of a translucent white tube.

He stopped. This was a place he thought he had dreamed the night before. He stood breathlessly on the edge of it, wondering who could build such a thing and what its purpose could be.

He became aware of other sasquatches that had followed him here, gathering in the tunnels behind him. None seemed eager to try to stop him. Some wished he would simply go.

Eventually Oscar appeared, ambling slowly and deliberately with his walking stick. He wasn't in a hurry. At his age, he only had one speed.

"I'm sorry, Oscar," said José at last.

The old man said nothing, continuing to amble.

José watched him approach, but thought mostly of the departed April. "This has never happened to me before," he said. "No one's ever died because of me. I've seen friends die, but never **because** of me."

Oscar drew within an arm's length and stopped. One hand was on his staff. The other was in his coat pocket, gripping something hidden.

"I got here and realized you're right," said José. "I **don't** know what's going on."

Both stared into the White Tunnel.

"This place has that effect on people," said Oscar in the bluish white glow. "The world is a bit bigger than you thought. That's all. Come back with me, and I'll explain the rest."

Oscar turned to go back the way he had come. After a few steps, he looked back and seemed surprised that José wasn't following.

The young OSI agent stared into the tunnel.

"The red pill or the blue pill?" he asked himself.

"What?"

"From _The Matrix_. It's a philosophical choice between an illusion we know and a reality we don't." José turned toward Oscar. "Okay, I see a lot of movies."

"Leaving now would be a bad choice—for you and me both."

"Maybe, but I have to." José gestured toward the eerie glow. "If Bigfoot's going up against O.S.I. agents to protect **me,** he'll need help." He took a step toward Oscar and shrugged. "For what it's worth, I trust you. So I'll come back as soon as I can."

Oscar revealed something he had been hiding in his coat. "All right," he said. "But take this with you."

It wasn't a gun, but a small metal box with an LED screen.

"It's the jamming device I mentioned. If you get more than ninety feet away from it, the people looking for you will pick up the GPS signal from your bionic eye, and then you're in real trouble."

José took the device and examined it. The LED display indicated that it was jamming.

Oscar put his hand on José's shoulder. "Don't let them see you," he advised. "Try not to interfere at all if you can avoid it. And please hurry back."

"I will," promised José. "I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes."

"Alice in Wonderland?" guessed Oscar.

José smiled as he ran down the White Tunnel toward the exit. He had mistakes to put right. He'd have to explain _The Matrix_ to Oscar some other time.

 **NOT FAR AWAY**

OSI Agent Wade Kirkland, a man dressed always in black, was annoyed. His trainee, José Mendez, was missing after what should have been a routine kill mission. Now more than a dozen agents searched the forest in the early daylight hours but found mostly raccoons and rabbits of the non-suspicious variety.

Kirkland tracked the only real lead he'd had so far, some uncommonly large footprints. They led to the isolated cabin home of Nick Borglund. Kirkland knocked on the door.

After a brief delay, Nick answered. "Can I help you?"

"Good morning, sir. I'm Wade Kirkland with the Bureau of Land Management. I'm investigating a disappearance near . . . What the hell are you wearing?"

Nick had had just enough time to remove the mask and feet before answering the door. He now wore a shaggy fur suit with inexplicably bare feet.

"Pajamas," said Nick. "It's cold."

"Yes, it is." Kirkland removed his sunglasses. "I don't mean to let all the cold air in. May I come inside?"

Nick quietly gestured for the visitor to enter. "It's bearskin," he said. "I hunt bears."

Kirkland entered Nick's simply furnished living room. Animal heads and mounted guns adorned the walls. One corner had been utilized as a home office for his web design work and included a computer and a bulletin board filled with newspaper clippings about Bigfoot.

"As I was saying, I'm investigating a disappearance," said Kirkland, surveying the room. "A man named Talbot. Lives in a cabin near here. You know him?"

"He hasn't been there long," said Nick. "I think he rents."

Kirkland saw the news items on the bulletin board, zeroing in on the headline: Local Prankster Linked to Bigfoot Hoax.

"You're Nick Borglund, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"You're kind of famous. Had your picture in the paper."

"It's a small town."

Kirkland wandered into the pantry, then out again.

"You have a nice place. Cozy. Wouldn't have guessed from the outside how comfy it is."

"I like it," said Nick defensively. He was standing strategically to block the entrance to the bedroom.

Kirkland noticed his stance. "I'd like to have a place like this," he lied. The OSI agent tried to peer around Nick. "Nice and private."

"Don't go in there," said Nick.

Kirkland brushed him aside as if he weren't there.

An American flag dominated one wall of the bedroom. There was also a full-sized bed, a dresser, and an overly large cabinet with a sliding door that covered an entire wall.

Kirkland moved toward the window.

"I'm just checking out the view from the back." He pulled back the curtain to see through the glass, but the view contained only more of the dense forest. "I'm thinking of buying a place like this."

Had Kirkland checked a second sooner, he would have seen José ducking behind a tree. The missing bionic man had tracked Bigfoot to the cabin and now listened with his enhanced ear to the conversation inside.

"It's not for sale," said Nick. "Why are you here?"

"It's like I said." Kirkland turned away from the window to study the bedroom. "Mr. Talbot's missing, and I was wondering if you've seen anything."

The overly large cabinet drew his attention. It had to have been homemade. It was too big to fit through the door and too deep to be a wardrobe. How many clothes could one man have?

"There are a lot of big footprints over at the Talbot place," said Kirkland. "We found the same kind of footprints here, at **your** place."

A man could hide _anything_ in a cabinet that big.

"I haven't seen anything," Nick claimed.

The cabinet's sliding door was slightly ajar, exposing some of the clothes hanging inside. On its floor, amidst the paper boxes and old boots, something dark and shaggy stuck out from behind the edge of the door.

"Maybe . . " said the agent.

To Kirkland, the shaggy protrusion looked like the profile of a hairy foot—but surely it was too big.

"But then again . . ."

The OSI agent lunged toward the cabinet, knocking Nick aside, slamming the door open, and sweeping aside the hanging clothes.

" _ **What's this!?"**_

The back of the closet was full of movie memorabilia, comic book boxes, and one askew mannequin in a Princess Leia costume. Leaning against the mannequin, propped up on some boxes, was a framed poster of a grainy flying saucer below the words I WANT TO BELIEVE.

"It's an _X-Files_ poster," said Nick. "I'm a fan."

The agent plunged his hands into the pile of boots and boxes on the floor of the cabinet and emerged with two suspicious shaggy items—a pair of oversized feet for a sasquatch costume.

"Look, I see what your game is." Kirkland pointed an accusatory sasquatch foot in Nick's direction. "You think it's funny to put on big feet and walk around, getting people riled up so your name gets in the paper. Well, it's **not** funny! It's pathetic! The Talbot cabin is a crime scene, and you're interfering with an official police investigation!"

"You said you were B.L.M.," said Nick.

Through gritted teeth, Kirkland hissed, "It's a _**joint**_ investigation." He dropped the fake feet and produced a phony business card embossed with the seal of the Bureau of Land Management. "Call this number if you see anything."

The agent stormed out of Nick's home with a final warning. "Stay away from that cabin, Nick."

Kirkland climbed into an unmarked black truck. The driver, a man in a black coat and tie, said nothing. The truck turned around and headed down the dirt lane. Neither man looked back.

If they had, they would have seen Nick discreetly pull back a curtain in the window to watch them leave. A minute later, they would have seen Bigfoot join him, looking over Nick's shoulder to see what he saw.

"He's gone," said Nick. "Knew he wasn't B.L.M."

Nick turned from the window and walked toward the pantry, signaling for his large friend to follow.

"When you texted that you had something to tell me, I thought you were gonna follow up with an email instead of coming to my door," said Nick, picking up his smartphone. "You kinda startled me."

Bigfoot's reply was immediately texted to Nick's phone.

SORRY. IT WAS A HECTIC MORNING.

"I'll pour us some coffee, and you can tell me about it. Did you like my costume?"

BETTER THAN THE LAST ONE.  
I STILL DO NOT FIND IT FLATTERING THOUGH.

Hiding behind the tree in Nick's backyard, José, the missing bionic man, could only hear the spoken half of the conversation, but he'd heard enough to draw some conclusions.

 _ **They're INTERNET**_ _ **buddies?**_

 _ **That's . . . disappointing.  
**_ _ **I won't fight anybody to the death today.**_

 _ **Makes sense though. Bigfoot's got that device that translates his thoughts into text. Just add an internet modem, and he could "think" comments onto blogs and visit chat rooms with no one being the wiser. Except his spelling would be good.**_

 _ **Oscar's right. I have no idea what's going on.**_

José concluded that, obviously, Nick was concealing the existence of the sasquatches by convincing everyone they were a hoax.

 _ **Bigfoot must have led Kirkland to Nick deliberately.  
**_ _ **He knows what he's doing.**_

 _ **I wish I did.**_

José scrambled to a different tree from which he could see the lane. His bionic eye zoomed on the departing truck just in time to see it disappear from view.

 _ **Kirkland's leaving. But is he giving up?  
**_ _ **I should follow him, but I promised Oscar I'd go back as soon as I could.**_

José turned and noticed a tree, taller than the rest, on top of a steep hill.

 _ **That tree. From up there I'll be able to see the road all the way to the county line.  
**_ _ **If Kirkland decides to turn around, I'll see him coming.**_

José's bionic ear heard the buzzing of a distant aircraft. He looked up, scanned the sky, and saw the drone—the kind that isn't supposed to be used outside of war zones. He wondered what other laws the OSI was breaking today.

 _ **The U.A.V. is moving off. In another minute, it'll be safe for me to move.**_

He waited. The drone moved behind some trees.

 _ **Now.**_

He ran toward the high ground, not in a straight line, but in a wide curve favoring the most densely wooded areas. He moved faster than an ordinary man could, expertly steering between the trees as they blurred past him.

He reached the base of the tallest tree and squatted in preparation for a big jump.

Each time he used his bionic limbs, he heard the subtle electronic sounds their internal circuitry made. They required a bionic ear to hear, so he usually ignored them, but here in the wilderness, the sounds seemed to call attention to themselves.

He leaped into the tree, regretting that no one else would know how cool they sounded.

 ** _Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-nanananana!_**

He landed on the highest branch that could support his weight. The view from it was spectacular. His bionic eye could see the main road and the unmarked truck Kirkland had used when he left the cabin.

The truck had parked on the side of the road almost a mile away—next to the unmarked van that had brought José here the night before. A few men in black suits and sunglasses were standing around, but José didn't see Kirkland until one of those men looked up.

Kirkland was on a sturdy branch forty feet above the others. It seemed Kirkland had had the same idea as José to get a lay of the land.

 _ **He's still looking for me.  
**_ _ **He's a good climber. That tree doesn't have many branches on it.  
**_ _ **It's almost as if . . .**_

José's eye zoomed in closer. Kirkland had removed his sunglasses and seemed to be systematically scanning the surrounding terrain for any sign of his quarry.

 _ **Shouldn't he be using binoculars for that?**_

Kirkland's scan of the area seemed very precise, very methodical. He carried no binoculars, no gear for climbing trees, no tools of any kind.

José's assumptions evaporated in a puff of dreadful clarity.

 **IN A TREE ONE MILE AWAY**

"See anything?"

Kirkland didn't answer yet. He was studying the tree on that _other_ hill. Although it was a mile away, his examination was very thorough.

"Thought I did," he said at last. "Must've been a squirrel. I'm coming down."

With no concern for his safety, he stepped off the high branch and landed with his friends forty feet below, making a loud thump on impact with the ground.

The men in black suits watched the descent and did not react. One of them grumbled about bad cell phone reception.

 **THE TREE ON THE OTHER HILL**

José hung from the only branch that was out of Kirkland's view.

 _ **Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!**_

His body contorted around inconvenient branches while attempting to conform to the shape of the tree. The trunk was just wide enough to conceal him, but only just.

 _ **Bionic. Kirkland's bionic.  
**_ _ **That sucks.**_

He maintained his position until he heard the distant sounds of two vehicles starting and moving back onto the road. He allowed a couple of extra minutes just to be sure.

 **THE SASQUATCH SANCTUARY  
** **TWENTY MINUTES LATER**

When José returned, Oscar was standing at the end of the White Tunnel, waiting for him like a worried parent. José now understood the reason for the worry.

"You look like you have more questions," said Oscar.

"This place," asked José. "How secure is it? Are you **sure** the OSI doesn't already know about it?"

"They don't. As head of the OSI, I never shared the secret of Bigfoot with the State Department." Oscar turned and led the way back into the deeper cave. "Our earliest encounters with Bigfoot were too mysterious to file a report. The intelligence we gathered was so sketchy, we couldn't be certain of what, if anything, had actually happened."

Oscar remembered one of those debriefings from forty years earlier. The only evidence of the adventure, a plaster cast of a footprint, sat on Oscar's desk while Jaime Sommers gestured emphatically and described a battle in a Mexican jungle, some strange people with handheld time manipulators, and an amazing throw by a shaggy cyborg that somehow stopped a volcano from erupting. Steve Austin added almost nothing to the debriefing. He let Jaime do the talking because he knew how it all sounded.

Oscar decided to spare José the more unlikely details of that conversation and instead explained the reason for his discretion.

"We had only footprints and some farfetched stories from our two bionic agents—one of whom had a history of memory issues," he said, "and the other whose memories had, on one occasion, been deliberately altered by the aliens."

José stopped.

"Aliens?"

"Here we go." Oscar rubbed his eyes, remembering why he never tells this story. "The aliens who built this complex. The ones who brought Bigfoot to our planet."

"The sasquatches are aliens?"

"Not all of them, just the one we call Bigfoot. And I'm getting off topic. Because of the lack of any hard evidence—and the fantastic nature of the eyewitness accounts—I doubted the very existence of Bigfoot until I saw him with my own eyes."

Oscar recalled the occasion. The sasquatch had been rendered temporarily inert after Steve had fished him out of a frozen river. Oscar had gotten his first glimpse of the creature in the back of a refrigerated truck that Rudy was using to keep the sleeping giant dormant. Rudy's x-ray images revealed a technology inside the beast that was beyond comprehension.

"By that time, the aliens who'd brought him here had already left earth and no longer posed a threat to national security. So there was no reason to risk my reputation, and that of my agency, testifying to the State Department about a folk legend connected to an alien abduction scenario. And there was no reason to put Bigfoot under the scrutiny that would surely come if our fantastic report were actually believed. The only official records of Bigfoot's existence were in the personal files of Dr. Rudy Wells who examined the creature."

They stopped walking when they reached Oscar's tent.

"I destroyed those files myself," he said with deep regret, "as Rudy requested before he died."

He was breathing heavily, perhaps because of the exertion from the walk, or perhaps because of something else.

"You okay?" asked José.

"Tired. Just tired." Oscar forced himself to smile, but he was clearly exhausted. "I'm glad you made it back safely."

He reached for the tent flap. José held the flap open as Oscar disappeared inside the tent.

"I'm taking a nap," he said from inside. "Don't leave the cave again until Bigfoot gets back."

José stared at the tent flap long after it had closed. The old man had seemed suddenly frail, and yet José could see the qualities about him that had inspired so much loyalty from those in the past.

José wondered where his own loyalties now were.

 **DARKWELL MEDICAL FACILITY, COLORADO**

Dr. Jessie Goodwin walked toward the break room for some much-needed coffee, but Dr. Endo found her first.

"Your report is late."

"Sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night," she said irritably. "There's nothing to report. José's eye isn't transmitting. His GPS is still off."

"We don't pay you for excuses—"

" _ **Doctor, April's DEAD!"**_ she snapped, expressing frustration she didn't know she'd had. "Apparently we're not supposed to **care** about that, but **some** of us . . ."

She stopped. She had hoped to shame Dr. Endo into showing some kind of empathy, but the rational part of her mind rallied and told her it wasn't about to work.

"Never mind," she said meekly. "I could be more useful if I knew anything about José's mission parameters."

"There are some details your Level Six clearance doesn't allow you to know, Dr. Goodwin." Endo slid his ID card through a wall-mounted scanner to open the sliding door to his destination. "Don't ask me about his mission details again."

Jessie would have followed him inside, but she knew that the area was restricted. The door abruptly slid shut in front of her.

LEVEL 8 SECURITY AREA; NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, said the printing on its surface.

 **THE SASQUATCH SANCTUARY**

Bigfoot quietly returned to find José laying peacefully next to Oscar's tent with his head resting on his backpack and his eyes closed.

"I'm awake, you know," said José before the sasquatch could leave. "I have a bionic ear, and you don't step lightly."

José sat up. "Oscar's asleep."

Bigfoot held out his smartphone for José to read.

GOOD. HE HASN'T SLEPT SINCE HE ARRIVED HERE.

José was a bit surprised by this. It had seemed to him that Oscar had _lived_ in this cave, but now he realized that could not be the case.

He took the smartphone from Bigfoot and examined it, something he had wanted to do since he'd first seen it the night before. The smartphone was zip-tied to another device with a similar shape but a radically different design.

"How come your Wi-Fi works when mine doesn't?"

IT IS THE ATTACHMENT. IT USES A DIFFERENT KIND OF ANTENNA.

José saw that the antenna was a straight piece of metal bent into a triangle at the tip. "Microwave?" he asked.

TELEPATHIC.

"Ah. Alien."

Bigfoot helped José to his feet as the message on the smartphone updated.

IT IS GOOD THAT YOU ARE HERE. YOU HAVE RAISED OSCAR'S SPIRITS CONSIDERABLY.

"How long have you known him?"

A LONG TIME, BUT NEVER WELL. I AM INDEBTED TO HIM.  
THE FIRST TIME I MET HIM, I TOOK SOMETHING FROM HIM WITHOUT ASKING.

José walked to the makeshift table and sat on the rock he'd been using as a chair.

"What did you take?" he asked.

AN INTERESTING STORY. HE AND I SHARED A FRIENDSHIP WITH A REMARKABLE MAN.

STEVE AUSTIN.

AFTER MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH STEVE, SHALON ERASED HIS MEMORY OF THE ENCOUNTER,  
AND I CARRIED HIM BACK TO THE WILDERNESS FOR HIS FRIENDS TO FIND.

IT WAS OSCAR GOLDMAN WHO FOUND HIM.

 **FEBRUARY, 1976**

Shalon watched on the Omniscanner as Bigfoot set the semiconscious Steve Austin gingerly on the ground. The sasquatch knew his mother was watching.

The search party discovered the missing earth man minutes later as he seemed to awaken from a deep sleep. Oscar Goldman, the leader of the search effort, leaned over him. He was relieved to find that his friend was all right.

Steve had a glass vial in his hand but didn't know why.

"What's this? Where'd you get it?"

"I don't remember."

Oscar glanced at the vial of dark blue liquid as he took it from Steve. "I'll have it analyzed," he promised.

Shalon watched the scene from afar with regret, whispering, "Goodbye, Steve Austin."

 **NOW**

Bigfoot stared resolutely into space as he recalled the events of those days.

SHALON HAD GIVEN STEVE A PARTING GIFT—  
A VIAL CONTAINING A DRUG CALLED "NEOTRAXIN"—  
FAR MORE ADVANCED THAN ANY EARTH MEDICINE.

I THINK SHE HOPED THAT WHEN HE FOUND IT, HE WOULD THINK OF HER.

SHE BELIEVED APPLOY, OUR LEADER, WOULD NEVER FIND OUT.

SHE WAS WRONG.

 **FEBRUARY, 1976**

"It was terribly irresponsible!" scolded Apploy across the great glass table of the conference room. "You'll have to go back to retrieve it."

Shalon had no excuse for her actions except for her own breakable heart—something which Apploy would never have understood. She promised to undo what she had done and left without an argument.

She told Bigfoot the news, but the sasquatch took it surprisingly well. She remembered how much he loved to travel and realized this was an opportunity for a little vacation for the both of them.

"Sasquatch, how would you like to go to Washington with me?"

Like many visitors to the nation's capital, they visited the Smithsonian, the capitol rotunda, and all the monuments. They also did some things ordinary tourists could never do, like visit the Oval Office. Shalon wanted to sit in the President's chair, but Gerald Ford was using it.

No one noticed or cared. With her time line converter, their tour took only twelve and a half seconds.

Their final stop was Oscar's office. She placed the memory editor on Oscar's head and switched off her TLC long enough for the editor to work. The OSI director went into a trance, but only briefly because the memory being deleted was very specific. This gave Bigfoot just enough time to locate and retrieve the neotraxin.

A moment later, the door opened and Rudy Wells entered. "You said you had something for me to analyze?"

"I did?" asked Oscar with surprise.

The visitors had already gone.

The sasquatch regretted the necessity of what they had to do. Shalon had edited the memories of humans before, but only of those humans who had invaded their colony. This time, Shalon and Bigfoot had been the invaders.

 **NOW**

The sasquatch turned toward José, who found the creature's stare unsettling and focused instead on the smartphone in his own hand.

THAT WAS THE DAY I MET OSCAR GOLDMAN.

THE ENCOUNTER HAS ALWAYS WEIGHED ON MY CONSCIENCE—  
EVEN THOUGH HE DOESN'T REMEMBER.

FOR MANY YEARS, I DID NOT SEE HIM—UNTIL YESTERDAY.

HE WAS ON A MOUNTAIN OVERLOOKING THE VALLEY—  
NEAR THE PLACE WHERE I HAD FIRST ENCOUNTERED STEVE SO MANY YEARS AGO.

HIKERS GO THERE TO ENJOY THE VIEW.

ALWAYS, I STAY HIDDEN FROM HUMANS, BUT THIS TIME,  
I RECOGNIZED THE SCENT OF STEVE'S OLD FRIEND.

I REMEMBERED THE MAN WHOSE MEMORY WE HAD STOLEN.  
THE YEARS HAD TRANSFORMED HIM. HE WAS SO MUCH OLDER. AND SO ALONE.

 **JUST THE DAY BEFORE . . .**

The sun would set on the mountains soon—reminding Oscar that his time was running out in more ways than one. This would have been so much easier if he were still on the inside. He had put off retirement as long as he could, but it hadn't been enough.

His flip phone rang. From a distance, Bigfoot watched as Oscar took the call.

"Yes?"

Bigfoot did not have bionic hearing. He could only hear half of the conversation and didn't understand the half that he heard.

"I know. I'm so sorry. Yes, it's my fault." The regret in Oscar's voice was unmistakable. "April was my friend, too."

Oscar begged the caller for forgiveness which he did not receive. A tear rolled down his cheek.

"You know I can't bring her back. All we can do is stick to the plan. Stay quiet. Stay safe. They won't connect you to me—not after all this time. I'm trying to salvage the legacy of the old O.S.I., but what you're doing is more important than that."

It was clear that the caller was someone important.

"Callahan, try to understand . . ."

Bigfoot felt he was intruding on a very private moment.

"Stay safe . . . And try not to hate me."

The call ended abruptly. He didn't close the phone. Instead he let it hang open as his hand dropped to his side.

Bigfoot emerged from his place of hiding. Oscar was waiting for something. The sasquatch had the very strange idea that Oscar was waiting for him.

"It's you," said Oscar upon seeing the creature. "You remember." The relief on his face was almost too much to bear. "I didn't think you would, but I hoped. As strange as it sounds, you may be the last friend I have left."

Bigfoot did not believe those words. They did not fit with what Steve had told him about this man.

The sun had set and the sky had turned deep orange. Oscar explained that he was being hunted. He'd made a terrible enemy and was paying a great price.

Bigfoot knew what that was like.

He picked up Oscar's backpack. He offered an arm for support. He led Oscar to the safest place he knew.

 **NOW**

José stared at the phone in his hand, moved by Bigfoot's account. The message on the phone updated.

TODAY HE IS BETTER, BUT I THINK YOU ARE THE REASON . . . NOT I.  
YOU HAVE GIVEN HIM HOPE.

The tent flap opened, and José hid the smartphone. Oscar emerged from the tent looking rested, renewed and confident. He still held his walking stick but didn't seem to need it.

"Ah-ha!" said Oscar. "Just the people I wanted to see. I've had a chance to mull things over. It's time to talk strategy."

He surveyed his immediate surroundings. "Bigfoot, I know your colonist friends took their tech with them, but did they leave any **chairs** behind? I'm tired of sitting on rocks."

 **MINUTES LATER  
** **A CONFERENCE ROOM (UNUSED FOR FORTY YEARS)**

The room was dominated by an octagon-shaped glass table surrounded by eight chairs. In years past, this was where the colony's elders had met to discuss policy, where they had conferred in confidence with the earth man Steve Austin, and where Apploy had ordered Shalon to go to Washington.

It was a room for which the sasquatches had had no use. José used a towel from his kit to wipe decades of dust from the table and set Oscar's lantern at its center. There was no other light except for the laptop Oscar had brought with him.

José and Bigfoot seated themselves at the table, but Oscar now chose to stand.

"You've heard me speak at length about the OSI's past," he said, "especially about my association with my predecessor, Oliver Spencer. I believe that understanding Oliver is the key to understanding his son, Eli, and the agenda he's pursuing at the new OSI."

He turned the laptop around so the others could see it. It displayed side-by-side images of Oliver and Eli. José had expected to see a family resemblance between the two Spencers, but there was strangely none. Oliver had less resemblance to his son than he did to the dad on _A Christmas Story,_ which José had seen as a boy.

"When I knew him," explained Oscar, "Oliver didn't talk about his personal life. Although I knew about his daughter, he never mentioned being married. I didn't know about his son, Eli, until I met him at Oliver's funeral.

"But I understand why Oliver wanted to keep his personal life private. In our line of work, we make enemies, and Oliver didn't want **his** enemies to know who was close to his heart. People like us only share those details with people we trust.

"Except Oliver didn't trust **anybody,** and that lack of trust motivated his philosophy. As head of the O.S.O., he wanted his field operatives to be predictable . . . Programmable . . . Robots. But artificial intelligence was beyond the grasp of technology in the seventies. His experiments with thinking robots resulted in disaster."

Oscar's laptop screen showed an archival clip of a robot with no face and a buzz saw for a hand. It attacked a pair of security guards who fired their guns at it with no effect until the camera itself was disabled. A superimposed graphic said: PROJECT MASKATRON – SEPTEMBER, 1979.

"Eli, the head of the **new** OSI, thinks like his father," continued Oscar. "I only met him once, but those who know him say he has the same control issues his father had. Eli learned from his father's mistakes. He realized that computer programs could never match humans for making judgment calls in the field. So he settled for the next best thing.

"He learned to program humans."

José suspected he knew where Oscar's narrative was going.

"It's been called brainwashing," said Oscar, "though that's an oversimplification. It's not like in the movies. There's no hypnosis, no hi-tech helmet that can make people do things they don't want to do. But you can influence what people **believe**. We're very **good** at that.

"For example, how many people still believe trickle-down economics is a good idea? Or that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11? These ideas can be easily debunked, yet they've been programmed into the public consciousness by those who stood to benefit from them—and who had the power to control the message."

He pointed at José.

"And if the target of your programming happens to be recovering from a life-changing injury and completely dependent upon your care . . . Well, that just makes it easier. You offer him powers he never imagined he could have. Offer him a lifestyle of nearly unlimited privilege. Provide the lure of attractive companions who just happen to live down the hall. And convince him that his enemies will take it all away."

Bigfoot turned a judgmental stare at José—which José thought was undeserved.

"That's what Eli Spencer is doing," continued Oscar. "His goal is to keep the country safe, but only on **his** terms. He's building an organization in which he holds **all** the power, keeps **all** the secrets, and commands an army of spies who **think** they've volunteered—even if they don't remember it. An army comprised of agents enhanced by technology and conditioned for loyalty. An army motivated not just to comply with his wishes, but to believe in his philosophy."

Oscar keyed the laptop, summoning a series of corporate logos to appear on the screen.

"This new OSI has hidden its tactics from outsiders by subcontracting with dozens of private corporations, each working on a portion of the project, but none of them ever seeing the big picture. By compartmentalizing and privatizing his own corner of homeland security, Eli has been able to frustrate attempts of oversight and mislead our own Congress."

The laptop froze on a full-screen logo for Darkwell Defense Systems. Oscar spun the laptop and typed a new command.

"I don't know how close Eli Spencer is to completing his own secret army," he continued. "But thanks to April, I know at least one important detail."

Oscar showed them the final image of his impromptu presentation. It was a world map with locations highlighted in Russia, Tibet, Egypt, Kenya, Iceland, Mexico and Peru.

"Eli is looking for something," he said. "We don't know what, but April found evidence that he has operatives looking for it all over the world.

"He needs to be stopped. Not just to preserve the legacy of the OSI, but also to ensure that the vast resources of our country aren't misappropriated by puppet masters.

"I admit, I used to have more resources at my disposal. At the moment, those resources are mostly here in this cave. That means we're overmatched. Until that changes, we're a **covert** force, not a fighting one."

José wasn't convinced of that. "The **sasquatches** can fight," he pointed out.

"Bigfoot will help, of course," said Oscar, "but he wants the sasquatches kept out of the conflict. He has his reasons."

Bigfoot's glare confirmed this beyond any doubt.

"His friend Nick has offered to help," said Oscar. "He's good with computers. We can use that."

Oscar closed the laptop.

"I know that doesn't sound like much. I don't have April on the inside anymore, and I don't know anybody else in the organization who we can trust."

José speculated, "Maybe I do."

 **COLORADO SPRINGS  
** **TWO DAYS LATER**

Jessie brushed her teeth and changed into a comfortable jersey before going to her laptop one more time, just in case there was something she'd missed earlier.

 _There's a cover up,_ she thought to herself. _That's for certain. But no smoking gun—nothing I can use without having to answer awkward questions about how I got the information in the first place._

She typed her boss's stolen password and accessed a screen of forbidden filenames from the OSI's secret database. She noticed a video file that wasn't there the last time she'd checked.

 _Created two days ago. Endo must have moved it since the last time I looked._

It was almost certainly nothing, but she clicked it anyway.

"Good evening, Dr. Endo," announced a recorded voice that made her lurch for her computer's volume control. "Or should I say, 'Good morning?'"

The voice—and the video image that appeared with it—belonged to Agent Wade Kirkland. He seemed to be recording the message from inside an empty OSI men's room.

"I'm leaving this recorded message because I won't see you in the morning," he said. "Agent Mendez has his first kill mission tomorrow, so I'll be going directly to the airport in the morning to prepare the plane."

Jessie noticed that Kirkland's hair was parted on the wrong side. The image was flipped for some reason, as if the OSI agent were somehow using the bathroom mirror to record his message, although she didn't know how and saw no camera in the shot.

"As we suspected, the stolen material was in her car," continued Kirkland. "April smuggled it out inside her thermos."

The incriminating thermos was in his hand. Jessie recognized the container. April had a _Hello Kitty_ sticker on the side of it.

"I removed it from her car before state troopers arrived, so we should be in the clear," said the assassin. "I'll leave it for you in cold storage."

Jessie quickly rewound the message and froze it on the image of the thermos. She wondered what could possibly be in it that might be worth April's life.

"I work in a monster factory," she whispered to herself.

She tried to play the rest of the message, but her computer had stopped buffering. Something had gone wrong with her internet connection.

She closed the lid of her laptop and saw José. He had been crouching on the floor to avoid being spotted through her window, and for some reason, wore an eyepatch.

He waved with a friendly urgency that suggested, _don't be afraid, and please don't scream._

Out loud, he said, "Hi."

 _To be continued . . ._

* * *

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:** Oscar has a plan. _


	7. Oscar Says

**CHAPTER SEVEN:** **OSCAR SAYS**

* * *

 **APARTMENT OF DR. JESSIE GOODWIN  
** **8:07 P.M.**

"José! What the hell?" Jessie jumped out of her chair, shocked to see the OSI's most missing man in her kitchen. "You can't be here! Everyone's looking for you!"

"Jessie, relax!" Still crouching, José reached toward the window and pulled the curtain closed. "They're not looking here. They're all in California."

"Like hell! They can track you electronically!"

"That'll be hard to do while I have this." He stood fully upright and pulled a high-tech box with an LED display out of his pocket. "It's a jamming device. It blocks the signals coming from the transmitter in my eye—and pretty much any other signal I get close to."

"You're the reason my internet stopped working?" It started to make sense to her, as did the reason for the new eye patch José was wearing, making it impossible for anyone to track him from any intercepted images from his eye, she assumed.

She pointed to the jamming device in his hand. "Where'd you _**get**_ that thing?"

"It's best if I don't say." He put the box back into the pocket of his cargo pants. "Look, this is hard to explain, but I've learned a lot since we last talked. It turns out we've been lied to. The OSI has a whole secret history that's been covered up and buried."

"You mean to say that Dr. Endo's been taking credit for a program launched by Rudy Wells in the seventies?" she asked. "And they've been secretly using bionic agents in the field for the last forty years?"

José visibly deflated. "That's a really good guess."

"I stole Endo's password and hacked his files." She sat down at her laptop.

"Wow, I was right about you."

"Right about what exactly?"

"About trusting you. I _**can**_ , right? You're not going to call the gestapo?"

"No. José, terrible things have happened. April's dead."

"I know."

"They killed her. She found something she wasn't supposed to, and they killed her for it."

"I know. I talked to the man she was trying to contact."

"What? Oh, my god. Who?"

José pictured Oscar Goldman in his mind, an image of a strange old man in a glowing white tunnel surrounded by sasquatches.

"You need to chew before you can swallow."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It sounded better when **he** said it. But the man's legit. You have to trust me." He sat down across the table from Jessie. "You do _**trust**_ me, don't you?"

The question surprised her. "Of course, I do. You're the one I work with who's _**not**_ a psychopath."

 **FORTY MINUTES LATER**

"So that's the mission," said José. "Find out what the OSI is hunting for–or anything else regarding what Spencer plans to do with the bionic army he's building."

"With my stolen password, I can only access _**medical**_ files," said Jessie, "not mission briefings. I have no idea what Spencer's looking for."

"That's **not** why I need you. For my plan to work, I need to be able to move around without being noticed, and that'll be hard to do if I'm jamming radio signals everywhere I go." He pointed to his eye patch. "I need you to switch off the transmitter in my eye. Make it look like it malfunctioned. Can you do that?"

Jessie picked up her smartphone and retrieved a schematic of his bionic eye. "I can do better than that. If you like, I can alter the encryption in your transmitter so that _**only I**_ can see your decoded signal."

"Really? That sounds complicated."

"Not for me. I've already done it once."

With her phone, she showed him the live stream transmitted from the duplicate eye in the Darkwell bionics lab. It showed Dr. Endo in the lab typing at his computer. "I'll be able to watch what _**you**_ see with your eye and send you messages from _**my**_ smartphone," she continued. "The OSI won't know what we're doing."

"That would help," he admitted.

Then José thought about Oscar, who was leading this caper from a hidden location. "What about my contact on the outside? Can you arrange a private feed for him as well?"

"Is your friend good with I-T?"

José remembered Nick Borglund—the professional web designer and amateur designer of sasquatch costumes—who had already offered to help Oscar with his computer needs.

"He has a guy for that."

"I'll need to give you a way to turn off your eye transmitter," she thought out loud. "Even an encrypted signal makes RF noise that can be detected, so you should turn it off when you're not using it." She moved her finger across her smartphone, manipulating the schematic in three dimensions. "Here's the tricky part. To make those changes, I'll need physical access to your eye."

José had anticipated this. "Here," he said, taking the bionic eye unexpectedly from the pocket of his cargo pants.

"Well, aren't you handy?"

 **NICK BORGLUND'S CABIN, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA  
** **THE NEXT MORNING**

Nick did _not_ wear his sasquatch costume as he worked his special magic on his computer.

At the moment, he was admiring the newly installed software that Jessie had remotely sent to him and which now ran beautifully on his hard drive. He had never met the young doctor but was already infatuated with her intriguingly subversive brain.

Most of Nick's screen was occupied by Jessie's program, but a small corner of the screen was reserved for a live Skype image of Oscar sitting in darkness. "Jessie's a pretty smart gal, Oscar," said Nick. "Her program's working perfectly. Everything José sees is appearing on my screen."

 **THAT MOMENT  
** **AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION**

"That's good news," said Oscar. "Can you make it work on mine?"

"Give me a minute," answered Nick through Oscar's laptop. "I can remotely install Jessie's encryption program on your hard drive."

"Good," said Oscar. "I want to see everything."

 **DARKWELL MEDICAL FACILITY, COLORADO  
** **O.S.I. DIRECTOR'S OFFICE**

Behind closed doors, Dr. Endo and Eli Spencer complained that their enemy, Oscar Goldman, still lived.

"Any word on José?" asked Endo of the alleged assassin's whereabouts.

"They're still looking," said Spencer, "but something tells me we're not any closer to finding him. Kirkland wasn't getting anywhere, so he's—"

"Sir?" interrupted the voice of Myra, originating in the outer room. "There's someone here to see you."

Spencer punched the intercom. "Cancel my appointments. We need to concentrate on finding Mendez."

"Agent Mendez is here," said Myra. "Shall I send him in?"

Spencer and Endo glared at each other but said nothing out loud. They knew Myra was in the next room, and so—possibly—was a man with a bionic ear.

Spencer rose from his desk and moved toward the door. He opened it the smallest possible amount.

Agent José Mendez appeared to be in a good mood, impressing Myra by flexing a simulated bionic bicep. His backpack was slung on his back, and his feet were inexplicably, annoyingly bare.

Jessie stood behind him clutching an electronic tablet and looking a bit embarrassed by her patient's behavior.

José looked up.

"Sorry to drop in unannounced, sir. I understand you're looking for me."

 **AN O.S.I. INTERROGATION ROOM  
** **SIX MINUTES LATER**

There were five men in the room. José and Spencer were seated across the table from each other. The other three men were security guards and could best be described as armed and annoyed.

"Now," said Spencer with exaggerated patience, "just . . . tell me what happened."

"Sure," said José. He appeared relaxed in a chair not designed for relaxation. One leg was crossed over his knee, which just drew more attention to the absence of his regulation footwear.

"I went to the cabin according to plan," he said of his mission three nights ago, "but nobody was there. When I left the cabin, I got ambushed. Somebody blindsided me. I didn't see a face. I woke up hours later with a splitting headache and bandages on my head. And the wireless connection in my head had been disabled. It occurred to me then that they must've tampered with my bionic eye."

"They?" asked Spencer. "Who's 'they?'"

"The Russians," said José. "Talbot works for the Russians, right?"

"Yes. Yes. Right," muttered Spencer, remembering the cover story they had told José. "So you missed the rendezvous with Kirkland because you were unconscious?"

"No. I woke up in time to make the rendezvous, but it seemed too risky."

"Risky? How?"

"Someone had tampered with the transmitter in my eye. I figured they were probably using it to track my movements—to gather intel about me or my mission. If I had gone to the rendezvous point, my bionic eye could have revealed details of a covert OSI operation to the enemy—including the face of a fellow covert agent."

"We had dozens of people looking for you."

"I know, but they were _**all**_ OSI agents. I couldn't risk compromising another agent's identity to the enemy."

"That was . . . good thinking. Then what happened?"

"I ran here as fast as I could."

"Wait a minute." Spencer leaned forward. "You made the trip—from California to Colorado—on foot?"

"Yeah, that's what took so long. My boots wore out, so I ran the last two hundred miles barefoot."

Spencer's eyes narrowed suspiciously as José continued.

"I'm afraid the mission was a bust. You said there was a mole in the OSI leaking information to Talbot. The mole must've warned Talbot I was coming."

Spencer suspected José was lying, but didn't know how to accuse him without acknowledging that the mission was a sham. José might have been telling the truth or secretly laughing at him.

José shrugged. "The bionics work **great** , though. _**That's**_ good news, isn't it?"

 **DR. ENDO'S OFFICE  
** **JUST DOWN THE HALL**

"Why did José go to your apartment?" asked Endo suspiciously.

"José didn't want to just march into a top secret base," said Jessie. "He told me his eye had been compromised, so it would have been a serious breach of security to return straight to the base."

Endo was looking for holes in Jessie's story, a process that, to an observer, would have looked like a staring contest.

"He trusts me," Jessie elaborated. "He knows where I live. He knew my security clearance is only a Level Six, so I'd be less likely to give away a big secret than an O.S.I. staffer with a higher clearance. And he knew I could troubleshoot problems with his bionic eye."

"Did you find a problem?"

"I used my bionic field kit to give him a quick diagnostic in my kitchen, and I discovered his transmitter had been switched off."

"Deliberately?"

"I don't know."

"You don't _**know?**_ " Endo leaned toward her. "Did you use the simulator to run an encryption analysis and compare it with the duplicate eye?"

"In my kitchen?"

"Oh, yes. Right." He leaned back.

Jessie continued, "I determined that the eye wasn't transmitting, which meant it was safe to bring him here. It's possible the security protocol in his eye switched the transmitter off automatically."

"Protocol?" He leaned forward.

"The one I wrote," she reminded. "You approved it. The transmitter's software is designed to switch itself off if the encryption is reset by an unauthorized user."

"Right. Right."

 **THE BIONICS LAB  
** **THIRTY MINUTES LATER**

"Hey, Jessie," José pleasantly greeted the young doctor as he entered. "I'm reporting as ordered." When he was close enough to look over Jessie's shoulder, he whispered, "Can we talk?"

She forced a smile and answered, "No one's listening." She covertly glanced at a security camera. "But somebody's always watching. Keep smiling. I need to fake a diagnostic on you."

She reached for the cyberphoropter, a high-tech bionic eye tester which retracted from the ceiling like a periscope.

José sat in the diagnostic chair positioned in front of it. "Do you still have the thing I gave you at your apartment?" he asked.

"I have it stashed," she answered, lowering the device to José's eye level. "Did Spencer believe your story?"

"He has doubts." José peered into the tester. "He told me not to leave the base. What about Endo?"

"Now that I know he keeps his job by taking credit for the work of the late Dr. Wells, he's not as intimidating as he used to be. And his lies aren't very good when he goes off script. I can stall him another day, at least."

"And then what?"

"Then he's going to insist that I replace your eye with the back-up," she said, referring to the duplicate eye still held in the hand of the bionic simulator, "which will be awkward, because I've also been tampering with _**that**_ one."

José turned away from the tester to look at the replacement eye. "That means I've only got one day to look around here covertly."

The bionic simulator—the mannequin with bionic parts that mimicked José's own limbs—stood alone in the center of the lab where a bracket on its back kept it secured to a strong metal post. Jessie removed the replacement eye from its grasp to examine the expensive little orb.

"I might be able to help you with the looking." She set the eye down on top of a spool of wire so it wouldn't roll off the workbench, then slid the bionic eye testing device upward. "They're not watching me as closely as they are you."

"Don't," warned José. "Really _**don't**_ _._ They're paranoid as hell."

Someone else entered the room, bringing the conversation to an abrupt end.

"Is that you, José?" asked the newcomer.

"Amber?"

The perky nurse with the short uniform giddily approached the diagnostic chair to greet José. "I heard that you were here!"

"I just got back," said José. "I heard about April. I'm sorry."

If Amber were mourning her coworker's loss, she didn't show it. Instead she bent sharply at the pelvis to give José a hug in his chair.

"The important thing is that you're safe! We all missed you so much!"

"I missed you, too, Amber."

The doctor's view of her patient was obscured by Amber's bent figure. The nurse's bottom seemed deliberately aimed at her.

"Amber, do you have the revised schematics that I wanted?" asked Jessie as her eyes rolled upward.

The nurse released José and turned to the doctor, pulling down the back of her skirt as she unbent. "I'll print it now, doctor," she said with a pout.

Jessie and José said nothing until Amber had returned to her work station at the far end of the lab.

Jessie leaned over her patient and whispered, "Remember, I still have Endo's password."

 **TWENTY MINUTES LATER  
** **JOSÉ'S QUARTERS**

José had just returned to his suite when he received a text message on his eye.

ARE YOU SAFE?

As far as the OSI knew, his bionic eye was still offline. He had just talked to Jessie, so the new message had to be from someone else.

"Yeah, I'm in my quarters," he said out loud. "Is that you, Oscar?"

The reply was immediate.

THIS IS BIGFOOT. I'M USING MY  
TRANSLATING DEVICE TO SEND TEXT TO YOU.

José remembered the device and its "psychic" antenna. The alien colonists who had brought Bigfoot to this planet had left the device behind so the mute giant could communicate with humans. Now it was connected to the Internet and allowed him to send telepathic text messages to other electronic devices like José's eye.

OSCAR DOES NOT TYPE VERY FAST,  
SO IT IS QUICKER IF I SPEAK FOR HIM.

" _ **You're**_ doing the talking now? That's a whole lot of irony."

I KNOW. I MAY ENJOY THIS.

José covertly looked out the window of his suite to see if anyone was watching him. "There are plenty of guards in this complex, but no field agents as far as I can tell."

OSCAR SAYS BE CAREFUL.

 **AT THAT MOMENT . . .  
** **AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION**

On the side of a road with a view of the Rocky Mountains, a windowless Dodge Sprinter van was inconspicuously parked. To a casual observer, it would appear that the location had been chosen for its outstanding view, but it had not.

The journey by van from California had been difficult for Bigfoot. Oscar and José had ridden together in the passenger cabin, but the sasquatch had remained hidden in the back with Oscar's surveillance equipment.

Nearly all of the space that had not been occupied by the equipment had been occupied by the sasquatch. Now Oscar joined him in the small space that remained to prepare for the mission ahead.

Bigfoot did not complain about the accommodations. He was grateful that the Sprinter's cargo cabin had headroom enough for a seated sasquatch, although the seat had to be repositioned to face backward, and the back had been folded down to accommodate his extra girth.

Bigfoot was different from the sasquatches of earth. He was a former cyborg, for example. He also had his own smartphone which was zip-tied to a telepathic translator and rested in a pouch strapped to his arm with Velcro ties. The phone and the pouch had been gifts from his longtime human friend Nick.

He saw Oscar's surveillance screen that displayed the live feed from José's eye. He heard José's voice ask, "Bigfoot, how's Oscar doing?"

The sasquatch looked at Oscar who, thanks to the Sprinter's extra headroom, could stand fully upright within the cargo compartment.

HE IS WELL.

Indeed, Oscar looked better than he had in days. Many in his generation believed that clothes made the man. Today he had foregone the usual zippered jacket and hiking boots in favor of a coat and tie. He looked at his reflection in a small wall-mounted mirror as he tied his necktie with practiced ease.

OSCAR SAYS, "FEELS LIKE OLD TIMES."

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS,  
BUT I BELIEVE IT IS A GOOD SIGN.

 **JOSÉ'S QUARTERS**

José was startled by the sudden buzzing of his cell phone.

"Spencer must be checking up on me," said José, looking at his phone. "Better _**him**_ than Wade Kirkland, though. I'm glad he's still in California."

José took the call.

 **MEANWHILE . . .  
** **CLOSER THAN YOU WOULD THINK**

In the medical building, Agent Kirkland entered the Darkwell Bionics Lab knowing that he was not expected. The agent had made no progress with the search in California, so Spencer had ordered him to return to Colorado while the rest of his team continued the search without him.

He was supposed to report to Spencer's office as soon as he arrived, but he couldn't resist a brief visit to the lab first.

"Amber?" he asked, setting his duffel bag on the floor.

The nurse, working alone, was delighted to be interrupted. "Wade? You're back?"

She saw him and ran gleefully into his open arms.

They kissed.

She wrapped one leg around his and clung to him breathlessly. They tugged playfully at each other's clothes as they only did when they were alone together.

Kirkland pulled back to look at the nurse. "Miss me?"

"You know I did."

"Where is everybody?

"Most of them decided to take time off when José went missing. He just showed up this morning."

"Where is he now?"

Amber rested her head against Kirkland's chest but continued to cling. "Sneaking around with Jessie, I expect."

"Sneaking?"

"José and Jessie are up to something. She's been acting weird since you left for California."

Kirkland stepped back from her as he processed this new information. "I'll have to check that out."

He kissed her once more, then reached for his bag and turned toward the exit. "Your instincts were right about April," he admitted.

There was a wicked gleam in Amber's eye as he left.

 **ELSEWHERE ON THE COMPLEX**

José walked across the Darkwell compound, through the parking lot, on his way to Spencer's office. He breathed deeply, hoping the fresh air would calm his nerves. The wind had picked up, and dark clouds gathered in a sky that seemed to match his mood.

He received a new text message on his eye.

TOUCH YOUR NOSE IF YOU SEE THIS MESSAGE.

José was in front of the medical center which was next to the administration building. The two buildings were connected by a third floor footbridge where he spotted Jessie carefully avoiding eye contact. It appeared that she was listening to music through the ear buds on her phone, but José guessed this was not the case.

He slowed his brisk walk to a casual stroll as he discreetly scratched his nose. "From this distance, I can hear you if you whisper," he muttered.

"Good," whispered Jessie. "I can hear you, too. I'm monitoring your eye and your ear."

"What are you doing up there?"

"A little snooping."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"There's a room in the back of the medical center I want to get into, but it requires a Level Eight clearance."

"So?"

"Did you know that Dr. Endo—with his Level Nine access—can upgrade the Security Level of his subordinates _**without**_ prior approval of the security office?"

"Really?" asked José. "Wait. What did you do?"

Jessie smiled confidently. "I'm _**not**_ saying that I used Endo's password to promote myself to Level Eight to get into that room," she said, "because, you know, that would be wrong. And I'm going to switch it back to normal when I'm done. No one will know about it as long I _**undo**_ it before the Security Office tries to issue me new credentials."

"Can we talk about this later?" asked José, trying to delay the subject. "Spencer wants to see me in his office now."

"You mean _**right**_ now?"

" _ **Now.**_ " José entered the administration building.

"Okay," said Jessie, turning back toward the medical center. "I'll get the **thing**."

 **ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, THIRD FLOOR  
** **TWO MINUTES LATER**

José approached the office of the OSI director, but slowed his steps just a bit.

"Are you guys receiving?" he whispered.

 **NORTHERN CALIFORNIA**

Jessie's spy program ran alongside Skype on Nick's computer screen in his cabin. Nick wore a headset to keep his hands free for typing.

"Bandwidth is good, Oscar."

 **AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION**

Bigfoot hunched in the van's cargo compartment to stay out of Oscar's way.

"We're getting the signal," confirmed Oscar.

 **ADMINISTRATION BUILDING**

José waited until he received Bigfoot's reply.

WE ARE RECEIVING YOU.  
OSCAR IS ASKING, "WHERE'S JESSIE?"

"She'll be back soon," whispered José. "I'll be listening for her arrival with my bionic ear."

GOOD LUCK.

José opened the door to be greeted by Myra.

"Mr. Spencer is expecting you, Agent Mendez," greeted the secretary without smiling.

José proceeded to the next door, opened it, and poked his head inside.

"Mr. Spencer?"

"Sit down, José," said his boss without looking up from his desk. "I still have some questions about your mission in California. I've been trying to verify some of the specific claims you've made, but you've given us very little to go on. I'm sure you understand."

José sat down. "I'll help any way I can, sir."

His ear detected the approaching sound of Jessie's heels against the floor in the corridor.

 _Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack . . ._

Spencer continued, "Dr. Goodwin's diagnostic seems to confirm her theory that your eye malfunctioned, but the timing of it seems a bit . . . coincidental."

José's eye received a new text.

OSCAR SAYS, ASK TO SEE THE DIAGNOSTIC.

"Can I see the diagnostic?" asked José.

"You want to _**see**_ it?" Spencer was genuinely confused. "Can you even make sense of it? It's a lot of technical gobbledy gook."

"I'm good with gobbledy gook. Jessie's been teaching me how my bionics work."

Spencer reached for his laptop's mouse. "Suit yourself."

The words "suit yourself" traveled from José's ear via smartphone to the bud in Jessie's ear.

 _That's my cue,_ thought Jessie. _Now I'll find out how well this thing works._

She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and hit a switch on the jamming device that Oscar had provided. Its display said: JAMMING.

She walked past the director's office without stopping.

 **AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION**

"The feed's gone," announced Nick via Skype as Oscar's screen went dark.

"Now we wait," said Oscar.

 **THE O.S.I. DIRECTOR'S OFFICE**

"Dammit! Lost my connection," said Spencer with disgust. "You'd think a high-tech organization like ours wouldn't have to suffer Windows Ten." He reached for his desk phone. "I'm calling I-T."

José made a timely observation. "You know the first thing I-T will do is ask if you tried rebooting."

Spencer sighed heavily, as he did whenever a subordinate said something obvious and undeniable. "You're right." He reached for his laptop's power button.

 _He's rebooting,_ thought José. _Next, he'll re-enter his password._

He looked at Spencer's hands, but the angle was all wrong. The keyboard was blocked from José's eye by the screen.

He looked about the room. There was a window with a view of the parking lot, but the lighting was wrong to provide the right kind of reflection.

Next to the window was an American flag on a pole. The pole had a spherical gold-colored cap. It would do.

His eye zoomed on the reflective sphere that capped the flagpole. Its reflection provided a golden fish-eyed view of the entire office—including Spencer's fingers on the keyboard. José magnified the image by 3200 percent.

 **AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION**

"The feed's back up," announced Nick via Skype.

"I see it," said Oscar.

 **THIRD FLOOR CORRIDOR**

Jessie had switched off the jamming device and now studied the feed on her smartphone.

"Good, José. I see what you're trying to do."

She typed with her thumbs.

USE YOUR POLARIZATION ENHANCER. IT AMPLIFIES REFLECTED LIGHT.

 **THE O.S.I. DIRECTOR'S OFFICE**

José took Jessie's texted advice. Immediately the golden hue disappeared, and the image sharpened.

 _Glad she's on my side,_ thought José.

The password was entered and accepted. "I'm connected again," grumbled Spencer. "And I've got your diagnostic."

 _I hope Oscar got that._

 **AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION**

"Nick?" prodded Oscar. "I hope you got that."

"Got it," Nick confirmed. "Give me a few minutes to clean up this video." He smiled at the ultra-high definition images he was getting. "I figured you feds led secret lives, but _**damn!**_ "

 **THIRD FLOOR CORRIDOR**

Agent Kirkland didn't have to ask anyone where Spencer was. With his bionic ear, he could hear—while still climbing the stairs of the administration building—that his boss was in his office talking to José.

Down the hall, around the corner, unseen from the stairwell, Jessie discreetly studied her smartphone, unaware of Kirkland's approach.

 _That went as well as we could have hoped,_ she thought, studying the image from José's eye.

She adjusted the app on her phone to a different channel to watch the signal from the duplicate eye in the Bionics Lab. She saw her boss working diligently.

 _Endo's in the lab,_ she thought, _so now's my chance to see what he keeps in the secret room._

She briskly left the administration building via the third floor footbridge and entered the medical building. She looked discreetly over her shoulder periodically along the way.

The room where her boss had spent so much time still had its imposing message on the door:

LEVEL 8 SECURITY AREA; NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

She took a last glance in each direction to see if she were being watched, but saw no one. She pulled out the card that identified her as Dr. Jessie Goodwin and slid it through the wall-mounted scanner. The scanner checked the personnel database which informed the security door that Jessie had been elevated two security levels only a few minutes ago. The door slid obediently open.

Jessie entered, and the door closed behind her.

She paused in the darkened entryway and listened. Dim light emerged from around the corner, but she heard nothing to suggest that anyone else might be in the room.

She reached into the pocket of her lab coat to get the industrial rubber gloves she used for handling caustic chemicals. Any fingerprints she left here would be difficult to explain later.

She stepped around the corner into the light.

 **DARKWELL SPECIAL PROJECTS LAB  
** **LEVEL EIGHT SECURITY AREA**

The first thing Jessie saw was the alleged purse snatcher, the "Petrograd Stalker," lying on a table, staring blankly at a ceiling that it would never truly see. Replacement limbs for the alleged Russian were scattered about on workbenches.

 _Robots,_ she thought. _I hate robots._ _Predictable and programmable. That's so Spencer._

She removed a glove and felt the robot's face with the back of her finger. It felt like real skin. Under its chin, she found a barely perceptible seam which she gently probed with her finger.

The face came off in her hand.

She was so startled, she nearly dropped it, but then found herself admiring the craftsmanship. The pliable skin on the face plate had a thin layer of metallic mesh which could be magnetized to adhere around the joints tightly enough to hide the seams when an electric current was applied. Now that it had been removed, the photoreceptor eyes stared sightlessly from a panel of exposed circuits on the front of the head.

She studied the eyeless face plate in her hand. The back of it revealed an intricate collection of tiny relays and levers which simulated human expressions on its front—all connected to electrical ports behind the cheeks that could be inserted into the front of the head.

She poked a lever above an eye hole that made the face squint.

She replaced the face plate and put her protective glove back on. She saw other items of interest like cabinets full of high-tech equipment and industrial power tools.

There was also a refrigerator with a glass door containing temperature sensitive medicines and chemicals, but Jessie's eye was drawn to the top shelf where she saw a thermos bearing a _Hello Kitty_ sticker.

She approached the refrigerator and opened it with a gloved hand. Her other hand reached for the thermos.

She paused, thinking of April, before she unscrewed the top. A wispy fog slid over the edge of the container and over her glove.

 _Dry ice?_

She probed the inside of the thermos with a gloved finger.

 _No, there's something else._

She removed a cylindrical glass container two inches wide with a rubber top. It was filled with fluid.

 _This is the evidence._ _The smoking gun._ _What April died for._

She stared in silence at the fluid-filled glass container. The eye floating in the fluid seemed to stare back at her.

 _Not bionic. Human._

 _And healthy._

A label on the container identified the donor as José Mendez.

Based on what the OSI surgeons had told her, this eye could not exist. José's medical file described in graphic detail this eye being shredded by shrapnel in Afghanistan.

 _Completely healthy._

 _My god, José, what have we done to you?_

She knew she held evidence of medical malpractice, conspiracy, and possibly murder. Proper authorities had to be told.

Her hands shook as she put the vial back in the thermos. She closed the lid, slid the thermos into the pocket of her lab coat and turned toward the exit.

Kirkland blocked her path.

 **THE OSI DIRECTOR'S OFFICE**

"Excuse me, sir." It was the voice of Myra, coming from the speaker on Spencer's desk. "Mr. Paulson is here to see you. He says it's urgent."

Instead of inviting him in, Spencer rose from his desk. "Stay here, José. This will only take a moment."

José remained seated as his boss left the office and met with a middle-aged man in the outer room. Amber the nurse was also there, struggling to lift a big metal suitcase with both hands.

 _That's weird,_ thought José, trying to appear nonchalant about staring through the doorway. _What's Amber doing here?_

Spencer had left the door open because he knew that José could hear what they said even if the door were closed. In fact, he and Paulson exchanged no words at all. Instead, Paulson showed Spencer an electronic tablet, angled away from José.

 _No one's saying anything. Not out loud, anyway._

Spencer looked at the tablet in Paulson's hand, then at Paulson himself. José's eye zoomed on the tablet, waiting for Paulson to relax, to rotate its angle just a bit.

 _He's making sure that I can't see it._

"Are you certain?" asked Spencer at last.

Paulson tapped the display. "Here's the live feed."

Spencer took the tablet and studied it. "All right. You'd better come inside."

Paulson entered first, followed by Spencer and finally Amber with the heavy case. Their body language felt wrong, making José's pulse quicken.

It quickened more when he received a new message.

OSCAR SAYS RUN.

José rose from his chair—but made no other move.

He pretended he rose simply to greet the new visitor. He trusted that the danger was real, but wasn't sure from where it would come. He could not ignore, however, what appeared to be the strap of a gun holster under Paulson's coat.

"José, this is Roger Paulson, our security chief." Spencer gestured toward the newcomer with the tablet whose display still could not be seen. "Amber you already know. They're here because we've just received some troubling news that concerns you."

New texts appeared.

OSCAR'S UPSET. I'VE NEVER SEEN HIM LIKE THIS.

YOU MUST RUN!

Amber handed the heavy case to Paulson.

"This new information demands that we continue our conversation in a somewhat different venue," continued Spencer. "You're probably wondering what's in the metal case."

Messages in rapid succession said:

OSCAR SAYS USE THE WINDOW.

YOU CAN MAKE IT INTO THE MOUNTAINS IF YOU GO NOW.

Paulson opened the case for José to see. Imbedded in foam were four high-tech chrome cylinders, each hinged along one side and open at the ends. One pair was about ten inches long, the other slightly longer—apparently custom-made to fit over each of José's bionic limbs.

"These are electromagnetic manacles," explained Spencer. "They were designed for you—in case something like this happened. They'll bring the strength of your bionic limbs down to more . . . manageable levels. Before we continue, I'm going to have to ask you to put them on."

As Paulson held the case open, Amber picked one of the manacles out of the case. She held it up and smiled, caressing it with her fingers like a shiny new toy. "It's going to be all right," she promised as she bobbed her head in a cute girlish way. "It won't hurt a bit! I promise!"

WHY AREN'T YOU RUNNING?

José's eyes darted from Amber to Paulson to Spencer. The OSI director was the only man in the room who appeared relaxed, standing casually with his hands in his pockets.

"What—" stammered José, bargaining for time to think, "what if I refuse?"

For the first time, Spencer looked troubled. "Oh, José. Is that how it's going to be? That's . . . disappointing."

Spencer walked away, toward the big TV on the wall, and hit the power button on the side of the screen. As the TV booted, he turned to face José.

"All right, then. If you _**don't**_ comply—"

The screen came to life and displayed a live security feed. It showed Kirkland in an interrogation room with his bionic arm firmly around Jessie's neck. The young doctor's frantic struggling suggested she was unable to speak or inhale.

"—we're going to have to hurt your girlfriend." Spencer put his hands back in his pockets. "I hope you understand, this isn't how I wanted to _**do**_ this."

Spencer stepped forward, his eyes locked in an expressionless stare. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Put the manacles on, José."

OSCAR SAYS THEY'VE ALREADY DEMONSTRATED  
THEY WILL KILL TO KEEP THEIR SECRETS.

Jessie's hands clawed Kirkland's arm in futility.

HE SAYS COMPLIANCE WILL MEAN DEATH  
FOR BOTH OF YOU! YOU MUST RUN!

Paulson continued to hold the metal case open. Amber's expression turned to pouty face as it began to appear that her gift might be rejected.

José considered his very bad options.

Then he lunged for Spencer's throat.

" _ **Nobody's killing anybody!"**_

Amber dropped the manacle and covered her mouth with fright.

Paulson let go of the metal case to draw his gun.

Before the case hit the ground, José had Spencer's back to the wall with a bionic hand around his boss's neck.

On the security feed, Kirkland did not react, keeping his hostage in a tight arm lock.

For a moment, no one moved. Amber looked ready to wet herself. Paulson's gun was aimed at José's head.

"That's _**my**_ plan," said José. "Nobody gets hurt. Mr. Spencer, tell your minion I'm not hurting you."

Kirkland was still displayed on the wall-mounted TV next to Spencer's head.

"I'm not hurt, Kirkland." Spencer's eyes never left the traitorous bionic agent at his throat. "I'm just peachy."

"And he's going to stay that way as long as Jessie does," promised José. "But if you hurt her, I can snap his neck, and we're all going to need a new boss."

José held out a free hand as a warning for Paulson to keep his distance.

OSCAR SAYS THIS IS A BAD IDEA, AND I AGREE.

Kirkland loosened his grip slightly. Jessie loudly gasped but still could not make words. Kirkland replied simply, "Sir?"

Despite the grip on his own throat, Spencer smiled. "Let's hear him out, Kirkland. I'm curious what the boy has to say."

All eyes were now on José. He watched the reflection on the TV to be sure Paulson wasn't advancing on him.

"José?" asked Spencer. "We're all listening."

"Here's what I propose." José was still working out the details in his head. "Kirkland, you take _**your**_ hostage, and I'll take _**mine**_ , and we'll both meet downstairs in the parking lot _**with**_ our hostages—and then we'll talk, man to man, like reasonable people. Agreed?"

On the screen, Kirkland said only, "Sir?"

Spencer's smile grew broader, admiring Kirkland's respect for the chain of command.

"Here's an idea," said the OSI director. "You go on ahead, and I'll meet you down there."

With his back braced against the wall, Spencer kicked José in the chest with both feet, launching the surprised agent backward across the office, through the glass window and over the parked cars of dozens of Darkwell employees.

 **THE PARKING LOT**

An armored vehicle had been parked in the fire lane next to the medical building, and the driver had just stepped out of it. He heard a noise and looked up.

He saw José fly backward from the third story of the administration building, clipping the window frame with his head, causing his body to flip uncontrollably as he left a trail of airborne broken glass in his wake.

For José, it was a moment of sensory overload. There was a sudden pain in his chest, followed by a pain behind his head and a fast-moving vision of the tops of parked cars alternating with a cloudy sky. He threw a hand out to protect his face a moment before he hit a windshield, with the dual effect of plowing a furrow through a part of the car's metal roof and reversing his forward flip into an abrupt backflip. Then he hit the asphalt and tumbled an additional twenty feet before skidding to a halt on his stomach.

He lost consciousness—for a second maybe. It might have been longer.

 _What . . . ,_ he wondered when he forced his eyes to open, _was that?_

His bionic eye gave him an error message.

 _Am I blind?_

REBOOTING, said the eye. His other eye tried unsuccessfully to focus on the asphalt against his face.

 _That felt like . . . That felt like . . ._

He couldn't think of words. His brain wasn't word-making.

Vision returned to his bionic eye, showing him another close-up of asphalt. REBOOT COMPLETE, it said. SEARCHING FOR NETWORK CONNECTION.

 _That felt like I got kicked by a cement truck._

He rose to his hands and knees. He successfully focused on his hand. CONNECTION ESTABLISHED, said his eye. YOU HAVE 5 NEW MESSAGES.

 _Ohhhh, that hurts._

He looked up and tried to make both eyes focus on the same thing, but one of them—his real one—seemed to be spinning away in its own direction. He concentrated on the image from his bionic eye which revealed the Darkwell parking lot and the words, LOADING MESSAGES.

 _I have to think straight. I don't think cement trucks_ _ **can**_ _kick._

He saw the third story window he had just exited. In it, Spencer had already removed his coat, loosened his tie and torn open the front of his shirt. Underneath was a ribbed tank top wrapped around chest muscles extraordinary for a bureaucrat.

The OSI director jumped from the third story window and landed like a ninja in the parking lot.

Five messages from Bigfoot appeared in rapid succession.

GET UP!

YOU'RE IN DANGER!

YOU HAVE TO GO!

WHY AREN'T YOU MOVING?

RUN!

He looked at his hand and saw blood. His hand shouldn't bleed. He realized it must be from abrasions on his face.

"Still with us, Agent Mendez?" asked Spencer, walking confidently forward. He spoke barely above a whisper, just loud enough for a bionic ear. "Good! That's good!" The bureaucrat stopped to admire the furrow carved in the roof of the parked Chrysler.

 _I should really get up._

José looked at his feet and concentrated on standing.

"Right about now, you're probably thinking, 'Maybe there's a reason they picked Eli Spencer to be in charge of bionics,'" said his boss. "Maybe that decision wasn't completely random."

 _Spencer . . . Oh, yeah . . ._

He watched his own hand braced on his knee as he slowly rose to his feet. A new text arrived.

JOSÉ, HE'S GOING TO KILL YOU.

He got dizzy and fell on his backside.

"I know a few things that you don't," said his boss. "For example, I know about the news item that's going to run in your hometown paper in a couple of days."

José tried to stay calm. He watched his boss's feet walking toward him. He didn't want to look up, didn't want to make eye contact.

The Chrysler seemed to be missing. That was weird.

He looked up and found the Chrysler. Spencer held it menacingly over his head the way no one—really, _no one_ —should be able to do.

Dark clouds had gathered in the sky. The wind had picked up. A storm was coming.

"Obituary . . . Corporal José Mendez, 24, died Wednesday," predicted his boss authoritatively, "after being struck by a car."

 _To be continued . . ._

* * *

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:** It gets real._


	8. Cyborgs

**CHAPTER EIGHT:** **CYBORGS**

* * *

 _ **I should have known.**_

 _ **I was the head of the Office of Scientific Intelligence—the most covert of all covert organizations.  
**_ _ **People trusted me. And I believed the best way to maintain that trust was to be worthy of it. That's how I built the reputation of the O.S.I. from the shambles of what had been the O.S.O.**_

 _ **I did my job too well. When I retired, those who took my place in the organization took advantage of the trust I'd built, and they're using it AGAINST the very citizens they've sworn to defend.  
**_ _ **I want to know WHY—and they want to kill me for it.**_

From the back of a Dodge Sprinter van in an undisclosed location, Oscar Goldman stared at his surveillance screen as it revealed the fiasco unfolding at Darkwell Defense Systems, the most private of all the private contractors working for the new O.S.I.

A Skype program running on Oscar's laptop streamed the voice and image of his newest friend, Nick, an expert on the subjects of sasquatches and computers.

"Hey, Oscar! The password is good! I have access to Spencer's files!"

The retired O.S.I. director ignored the voice, concentrating instead on the images streaming from José's bionic eye.

 _ **José Mendez wanted to help. He's the latest agent given bionic powers by the new O.S.I. and the latest victim of its lies. I sent him back to those who deceived him.  
**_ _ **I sent him to steal secrets from the NEW head of the O.S.I., Eli Spencer, the son of the man who forty years ago nearly ruined the O.S.O.**_

 _ **I sent him into harm's way with faulty intelligence.**_

 _ **I assumed Eli did what I would've done.  
**_ _ **But I TRUSTED my agents. Spencer trusts no one. Someone like that doesn't give his subordinates powers he doesn't have himself.**_

A live-streamed close-up of Eli Spencer filled Oscar's screen, captured from the bionic eye of José Mendez who sat on the pavement, staring up. Eli's unbuttoned shirt revealed chest muscles no one suspected he'd had. His loose necktie flapped in the wind like a pennant. The sky in the image was obscured by the undercarriage of a Chrysler that Eli held over his head.

"Hey, Oscar," said Nick via Skype. "I took my attention away from the live feed for a few minutes. What the hell's going on over there?"

Oscar watched as Eli Spencer prepared to crush José with an automobile, and security guards rushed into the parking lot with guns raised, ready to fire when their boss gave the word.

"Talk to me, Oscar! This doesn't look good!"

 _ **I should have KNOWN.**_ _ **I'm Oscar Goldman, former head of the O.S.I. . . .**_ _ **and this is my fault.**_

 **DARKWELL DEFENSE SYSTEMS  
** **THE PARKING LOT**

"Freeze!" shouted the nearest guard, his gun aimed at José's head. "Don't move, or we'll shoot!"

If the automobile over Spencer's head felt heavy, it didn't show. Instead he acknowledged his security team approvingly. "Thanks, guys. I appreciate the thought. But as you can see, I've already got this well in hand."

He nodded toward the buildings behind him and the handful of Darkwell staffers gathered in front of it.

"Manage crowd control," he ordered the guards. "Keep spectators away from the windows. Not everyone in those buildings has the clearance to see what happens next."

The guard nodded and signaled the rest of his team to escort the onlookers away. "Get everybody moved to the far side of the complex," he improvised. "Say it's a radiation leak."

José received another urgent text message on his bionic eye.

GET UP, JOSÉ!

 _Bigfoot's still trying to save my life_. _That's just like him._

Spencer turned his attention to the upstart sitting in a daze on the pavement. "You know, José, you're a real disappointment. How did you go so _**wrong?**_ " He hoisted the Chrysler a little higher. "Time to start over."

Just as he should have dropped the car on his target, he stumbled backwards because, when he wasn't looking, a sasquatch jumped onto the rear bumper.

Bigfoot had an intuitive sense of how to maximize a weight advantage, and in accordance to his plan, Spencer's load had just become unmanageably top-heavy.

The sasquatch sent José another message.

RUN!

It was sent using the telepathically enhanced smartphone strapped to his arm, even as the giant scrambled over the top of the car.

The O.S.I. director teetered as though drunk, trying to discard the vehicle but thwarted by the counter-movements of the unwanted passenger. For a few tense moments, Spencer couldn't rid himself of the car without dropping it on himself.

Using strength no one else could match, Spencer tossed the car upward and backward. The sedan toppled behind him, smashing its rear bumper into the asphalt as it overturned while Spencer sprang clear of it.

Even as the car's rear end struck the pavement, Bigfoot scrambled over its top and leaped over its grill. His leap carried him all the way to his intended target where he landed backside-first on his opponent's back. Eli Spencer was flattened against the pavement by the adversary he had not yet seen.

Bigfoot rolled away and regained his feet to face his enemy. He expected to find Spencer injured, winded, or unconscious.

Instead, Spencer was quickly on his own feet and studying the new attacker.

"What . . . the hell . . . are you?"

" _ **RRRRRRRRRRRRGH!"**_

"Seriously, what traveling medicine show did you wander out of? Are you a gift shop souvenir?"

Spencer methodically walked around Bigfoot, trying to see every angle of him. The sasquatch countered the movement, looking for a tactical advantage against the man.

"You're working with José, is that it?" asked the bureaucrat. "Are you his sidekick? Or is he yours?"

Bigfoot did not understand the subtleties of sarcasm but recognized the condescending tone. The tiny man goaded him.

It worked. The giant charged with his full might.

" _ **RRRRAAAAAAGHHRRRR!"**_

Spencer assumed a familiar judo position to redirect his attacker's momentum, but before the blow came, José kicked the OSI director in the back, forcing him out of Bigfoot's path.

José tumbled, rolling quickly back to his feet and angrily facing his boss. "He's _**my**_ monster! Get your _**own!**_ "

As Spencer rolled across the asphalt, Bigfoot whirled around, enraged that his target had been taken from him, but José intercepted the giant before he could charge again.

"Thanks," said José quickly, "but he's too strong for you. I can handle him—now that I've got my head back together."

He put a hand on Bigfoot's shoulder to focus the giant's rage. "Jessie needs help, too," he reminded. "I can _**hear**_ her."

His bionic ear sifted through the cacophony coming from inside the medical building. People were being evacuated. Guards shouted. Staffers protested. Doors slammed.

One familiar voice said, "You're hurting me!"

She was in the first floor main corridor—and not alone. "The party's this way," Kirkland replied, dragging Jessie toward the exit.

In the parking lot, Spencer was already on his feet and removing his shirt.

But José's eyes were locked on Bigfoot. "She's in the medical building," he said, "first floor, heading this way. I _**have**_ to deal with Spencer." José grabbed Bigfoot's shaggy chest. " _ **Help HER!"**_

Bigfoot acknowledged with the slightest of nods. Then he turned and charged into the medical building, unsubtly tearing the glass door off its hinges as he barreled into the lobby.

 _He can do this,_ thought José. _He'll have the element of surprise._

 **FIRST FLOOR MAIN CORRIDOR**

Agent Kirkland used his bionic grip on Jessie's arm to tug her relentlessly toward the swinging doors at the end of the corridor.

He stopped short when the doors unexpectedly burst into splinters, revealing a seven hundred pound charging mass of enraged hair, teeth and claws.

" _ **RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!"**_

José knew well that no one expects to be attacked by Bigfoot.

 **THE PARKING LOT**

Outside, Spencer charged José with clenched fists and murderous intent. José charged back.

The younger cyborg hoped he could take out his opponent by landing the first punch, but Spencer blocked the blow with a defensively raised forearm. He also blocked the second, third, and fourth blows in uncannily quick succession.

"There's something you don't understand, boy," grunted the bureaucrat as he repeatedly blocked. "This isn't a fight you can win."

José feinted with his right fist, but channeled his real power into a knee aimed at Spencer's groin. The knee was blocked by a lightning-quick open palm.

"I've been _**customized**_ ," growled Spencer. "I'm the _**'luxury'**_ edition."

José rained a storm of blows upon his enemy, faster than the eye could track, and followed with a power kick to the face.

Spencer grabbed the foot and used it to swing José into the side of a minivan parked thirty feet away. The side of the van collapsed, shattering each of its windows on impact.

 _ **KRASH!**_

" _ **You're**_ more of an assembly line model," observed Spencer. He strolled toward the spot where José gasped on hands and knees surrounded by bits of broken glass.

José rose to a crouch and scuttled to the other side of the smashed minivan, looking for a place of momentary cover.

Spencer followed. "What's the matter? Don't feel special anymore?"

While his prey was temporarily out of view, the O.S.I. director heard the curious sound of tearing metal.

 _ **krrrr-TNNNKK!**_

He peered around the corner of the van and asked, "You all right back here?"

He examined his surroundings with binocular bionic vision. Microscopically precise depth perception was an advantage of having two bionic eyes.

The wrecked van was on his right. A cinderblock wall that covered the medical building's ground floor was 12.46 feet away on his left. José was nowhere to be seen.

"I was afraid you might have fallen and hurt yourself," called Spencer. He waited for a reply, but heard only his own echo. Infrared vision revealed no heat signatures in the lot larger than a frightened squirrel.

He looked down and noticed something that didn't require bionics to see. The van's front wheel had been torn away.

He spun toward a noise from his left.

He saw the wheel a little too late. Someone with bionic strength had hurled it like a flying disc, bouncing it off the cinderblock wall to strike him forcefully in the chest. The impact flung him backward over the hood of the van and across the pavement.

He spent less than a second on his stomach, cursing his opponent's stealth, before starting to rise again. He was still in mid-crouch when he saw the fast-approaching heel of José's boot in the middle of a flying kick.

Spencer leaped over José's head like a cricket. José tumbled beneath his boss's feet and across the asphalt.

Spencer landed nimbly on his feet, facing his opponent. He scolded the upstart with an upraised right hand and wagged an index finger of shame.

"José . . . José . . . Now you've just made me mad."

The hand with the upraised finger closed into a fist. The arm bent _backward_ at the elbow (as no ordinary arm could) and exposed a gap in the skin at the joint. A steel barrel extended through the skin.

Spencer's bionic eyes provided him with a targeting crosshair centered over José's face as a text graphic confirmed that a 3-D targeting system had engaged.

"Aw, hell no," said the target.

The steel barrel had not yet fully extended when José pivoted and ran for cover.

 _ **TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!**_

José remembered the armored vehicle he'd seen parked next to the building and darted for it, making the abrupt right turn toward safety only by using the medical building's cinderblock wall as a vertical running surface. Bullets fired from Spencer's arm caused cinderblock chips to dance around José's feet, and he hoped gravity would forgive him long enough to reach the temporary safety behind the armored transport.

 **FIRST FLOOR MAIN CORRIDOR**

Meanwhile, Kirkland was tasting plaster and didn't care for it.

The attacking sasquatch had hoped to crush the tiny man's skull against the wall with his giant hand, but the interior drywall construction proved to be softer than the man's head and crumbled on impact. Bigfoot didn't understand human habitats and only now realized the man was still conscious and still had a bionic grip on the hostage.

Jessie tried frantically to pull away, attempting to grasp how the struggle had escalated so quickly beyond her understanding, but she could only repeat her demand of "Let go!"

Kirkland held on. He was not easily frightened. With his face still buried in drywall, he reached with his free hand and grabbed the shaggy arm that held him.

Bigfoot felt the strength in that hand. He remembered that he no longer had the strength he'd had in his youth when he had been a cyborg. He remembered that he'd long ago given up that power so that he could remain on earth when the science colony had returned to space.

Now, as Kirkland emerged from the wall, he held a hostage in each bionic hand.

"Is that you, Nick?" he asked, applying pressure to Bigfoot's forearm, studying the creature as it attempted to retreat.

"No, your costume is better than his," he concluded, "and you're quite a bit taller."

"Attention all staff," echoed an amplified voice. "Please exit the building toward the sports complex. Avoid the parking lot and all south-facing windows."

The assassin ignored the message and smiled through clenched teeth. "Let's bring you down to size," he grunted.

The creature's mouth opened in pain as Kirkland forced it to its knees, establishing his dominance over the giant and enjoying it.

While he was distracted, Jessie took initiative. She kicked the assassin where he was leastbionic. He doubled over in pain, releasing both captives at once.

Jessie fled down the corridor. Behind her, the two combatants were on their knees, but for different reasons.

Kirkland saw his captive getting away. Ignoring his discomfort, he sprang to his feet in pursuit.

"Come back here, you b—"

Before completing his first step, he was blindsided by the sasquatch who tackled with his full weight, forcing both of them through the opposite wall into an unsuspecting cubicle-filled workspace.

 _ **KAAaaaR-RUNCH!**_

Despite the efforts of security, some of the staff had not yet evacuated, convinced the order was a drill that could be safely ignored. The stragglers felt the first tremor of doubt about their decision when a man and a sasquatch plowed unexpectedly through a wall, a cabinet, and all other obstructions three cubicles deep—scattering office supplies and invoices in unexpected directions.

Kirkland landed on his back in a pile of binders, power cords and sticky notes. Annoyed, he glared at his attacker and sprang to his feet.

Bigfoot chose not to get close to the man's bionic limbs again, instead reaching for the nearest thing he could throw—a metal dolly abandoned by a frightened clerk. Lifting it by the handle with a single giant hand, he scattered the packages it carried across the room as he swung the dolly down upon his attacker. The clamor that resulted when Kirkland blocked the weapon with his forearm reverberated like a collision of two sledgehammers.

 _ **CLAANNNG!**_

The dolly crumpled, tearing loose an axle which spun across the room.

Kirkland spat and advanced upon his attacker.

 _I underestimated this man,_ Bigfoot realized grimly. _He is part machine—as José is. As I used to be._

Bigfoot found a five-gallon water bottle from a cooler and threw it.

Kirkland smashed the projectile with his fist, bursting it like a balloon, drenching the carpet, the walls and himself. It did not slow him down.

 _I forget that I am not as young as I was._

Bigfoot desperately swung a fist which Kirkland blocked.

 _Or as strong._

Kirkland swung, striking Bigfoot on the side of the head.

 _I am failing._

The assassin followed with a blow to Bigfoot's stomach. The giant staggered, tipping over a pair of filing cabinets, then pivoting and staggering back toward his attacker. Kirkland sidestepped and brought both bionic fists down upon the creature's back.

The sasquatch collapsed, landing face down on the carpet under a flurry of vacation request forms.

Kirkland stood over the creature until he was certain it would not get up again.

 **THE PARKING LOT**

 _Spencer's got a machine gun in his arm,_ José quickly thought. _**I**_ _want one of those._

He hid behind a ballistic armored tactical transport (which the security staff had called a "BATT") that had been parked alongside the cinderblock wall at the front of the medical building. He knew the three-foot gap between the BATT and the wall would only protect him for a few moments.

His eye zoomed sideways to a spent shell lying thirty feet away.

 _Twenty-two caliber—like I used in the Army. His arm can't be big enough to hold many rounds, though._

"Why are you hiding, José?" taunted Spencer after reconfiguring his arm back to normal. He dropped to his hands to peer under the vehicle, looking for his enemy's feet between the wheels.

José had anticipated this. He used the opposing surfaces of the wall and the vehicle to straddle the gap and keep his feet above Spencer's line of sight.

"It's not like you can hide, you know," Spencer warned, rising to his feet.

 _He's right. With his bionic ear, he doesn't need to see me to know exactly where I am._

"Not coming out?" asked the shirtless bureaucrat. "Have it your way."

The armored vehicle lurched violently sideways when Spencer hit it, collapsing José's safety zone by half.

 _ **SKKRRRRRCH!**_

 _Dammit, he's strong! And I'm getting crushed!_

A pair of secretaries worked in the office on the other side of the wall. One was on the phone while the other wondered aloud, "Do you hear something?"

The phone was dropped when a section of the wall collapsed, pushing aside a storage locker and dropping José sideways on a slab of cinderblocks and plaster.

To the secretaries' surprise, the newcomer looked unhurt and was busy scrambling across the debris to double back.

In the parking lot, Spencer looked again under the BATT, hoping to see his enemy trapped beneath it.

"Are you all right, José?" he asked. "I heard something break. Was it you?"

 _Bionic hearing works both ways, boss._

By the time Spencer finished his jibe, José was running back toward the hole in the wall. He jumped through it and slammed into the side of the vehicle, pushing it violently in the opposite direction even as Spencer tried to look under it.

 _ **SKKRRRRCH!**_

The BATT's armored edge smacked Spencer's head.

 _ **WHUCK!**_

José landed in the new gap created by the impact. He risked a peek under the vehicle.

 _Please, be unconscious._

Spencer stared back. Fists and teeth were clenched.

The OSI director sprang to his feet and ran around the vehicle, reconfiguring his arm back into gun mode as he rounded the corner. "You're only making things worse, José!"

He pointed the weapon into the gap, but it was empty. He did not risk entering it himself. If he _had,_ he might have noticed the armored door had been torn loose from the driver's side of the vehicle.

" _ **You can't hide from me!"**_ screamed Spencer.

" _ **I'm not!"**_ shouted José from the right.

Spencer fired in the direction of the voice.

 _ **TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!**_

He saw José running toward him from across the lot, rapidly closing the distance while holding the BATT's armored door as a shield.

From José's perspective, the world seemed to move in slow motion, an effect he'd experienced before when he ran at bionic speed. He knew the effect was an illusion, the result of adrenalin rushing into his brain, but on this occasion he was thankful for it because there was a lot he needed to see.

The window of the bulletproof door allowed him to navigate—but also to see each approaching bullet as it left the muzzle of his opponent's arm. He could also see the muzzle flare that erupted behind each bullet and the enraged features of his enemy's face as he fired them.

José did his best to anticipate the path of each bullet, using his bionic ear to monitor the recurring impacts against the armor, knowing that each impact he heard meant one less bullet available to threaten his life. As the stream of bullets moved beyond the armor plating to the door's bulletproof window, cracks appeared in the reinforced glass, and he was forced to admit that the word "bulletproof" was a relative term that ideally should not be put to the test by someone unprepared to test it with his face.

Acting against instinct, he accelerated toward the threat.

Upon getting within an arm's reach, he swung his improvised shield upward, knocking his foe's weaponized arm aside and delivering a solid blow to Spencer's unprotected face.

 _ **CLANGGGGGGG!**_

Upon impact, the handle separated from the armored door, spinning it across the lot. Both combatants were knocked backward from the collision, dropping them onto their backsides.

Spencer was the first to regain his feet—to José's astonishment. The impact should have disabled him, but Spencer appeared unhurt.

But only in profile. As Spencer's head turned, a gash was revealed in the skin across his temple. No blood spilled from the wound, but a chrome plate was visible beneath the skin where there should have been only bone.

José felt the awful tug of inevitability.

 **THE MEDICAL BUILDING**

Agent Kirkland ran from one corridor to the next, slowing down just enough to round each corner without smashing through it.

Jessie had tried to mislead him with doors left ajar for no reason and an empty elevator sent to nowhere. At one point she had removed her shoes knowing that her heels made sounds Kirkland could pinpoint, but she could not avoid leaving infrared footprints her pursuer could track.

The trail seemed to go cold on the third floor. Kirkland charged down the corridor in the last direction he knew she had gone, but stopped when he realized he was running past the Bionics Lab.

No warm prints were visible on the door in any part of the spectrum, but the door was the variety that could be opened electronically with a sliding card, so no heat would linger if a human had touched it.

He slid his own card in the scanner and opened the door.

The lab was dark and apparently vacant, but the equipment inside was humming as usual. Computer screens and blinking lights provided enough illumination for even a normal human to navigate the space if she were looking for a place to hide.

He stood on the entryway that overlooked the lab and addressed the apparently empty room.

"I know you're here, Jessie. I hear you breathing."

He waited for a response but did not expect one. He descended the short stairs to the lab floor.

"I know you're afraid," he told his prey. "I can hear your heart pounding."

This was true, although there were just enough equipment sounds and buttressed angles in the room to make the source of a heartbeat difficult to pinpoint with even his ear.

In her place of concealment, Jessie angled her smartphone downward so its glow would not betray her location. She used it to urgently study the live feed from the duplicate bionic eye she'd left on her workbench. Ironically, she had spent months perfecting the eye's telescopic abilities, but now all she wanted was to make the image _wider_ , to see as much of the lab as she possibly could.

She watched Kirkland approach her work station—where the eye sat on a spool of wire. He paused there, apparently looking for signs of her recent presence.

"I can see in the dark, you know," he reminded, surveying the room.

Again there was no response, so he moved deeper into the lab, past the bionic simulator. As good as his vision was, he did not have eyes on the back of his head, so he didn't see the simulator's arm move.

He fell back suddenly as something tugged on his shirt. Before he could react, the simulator's bionic arm locked around his neck.

He tried to move forward, to wrench himself free, but could not. The simulator was mounted on a steel post bolted on both ends to the floor and the ceiling.

From behind the nurses' workstation, Jessie revealed herself wearing bionic control gloves on each hand, her left arm dramatically bent in a head-locking position.

"That's right," she said glaring. "You're in _**my**_ world now."

Her left arm remained locked as her right gloved hand extended a pair of fingers for eye gouging.

Kirkland grabbed the simulator's right arm a moment before it would have blinded him. He needed both arms to keep the simulator's bionic hand from clawing apart his face.

"Jessie!" he croaked. "Let's talk about this!"

"Too late," she said and meant it.

Kirkland could not afford to release his grip on the attacking arm for even a moment, but his booted heel managed to locate the base of the simulator's post where it connected to the floor. His heel pounded the post with the force of a sledgehammer. It did not budge, but he pounded again—repeatedly and with escalating urgency.

Jessie heard the clanging of Kirkland's heel and glanced aside at the simulator's screen, which warned:

STRENGTH AUGMENTED BEYOND RECOMMENDED LEVELS

She began to worry about the simulator's design tolerances when its mounting post snapped at the bottom, separating it from the floor and the ceiling simultaneously. Kirkland lurched forward, sending the top of the steel column through several high-voltage power cables suspended from the ceiling.

Kirkland's body seized up as electricity raced through his body, finding his bionic limbs to be excellent conductors.

" _ **YEEEAAAARRRRRGHHH!"**_

Jessie flinched as sparks appeared above her head where entangled cables were wrenched free of their conduits. The lab was illuminated by sudden flashes that appeared wherever the thrashing steel column on the simulator's back came near a conductive surface.

She discarded both bionic gloves and ran for the exit, but the simulator continued to throttle its hostage. Its control lines had been severed. The machine had no instructions to stop.

Jessie dodged a shower of sparks and collapsing ceiling tiles on her way to the landing. She ascended the stairs and left the chaotic room, turning around only when she had reached the corridor.

Through the open door, she saw Kirkland through a fog of smoke and arcs of electricity. She raised her arm to protect her eyes.

Because of the distraction, she didn't see the sasquatch bounding toward her until after it had scooped her up in its thick hairy arm and carried her down the corridor.

It sent a message:

JOSÉ! I HAVE YOUR WOMAN!

 **THE PARKING LOT**

José saw the message in his eye—displayed over the image of Eli Spencer standing over him with the muzzle of a weaponized bionic arm pointing directly at his head.

A follow-up message said:

JESSIE'S SAFE! YOU MUST GO!

"José," said the man with the gun for an arm, "this is for the good of the country."

 _Click, click, click, click, click!_

José knew the sound. The arm was empty. His ploy had worked.

"Waste not," he said and kicked Spencer in the face.

It was a kick an ordinary man could not have achieved. He kicked with his back on the pavement, launching his foot upward even as his bionic arms pushed the rest of his body after it, increasing its power, landing it under Spencer's jaw. The target was unprepared. It sent Spencer upward and backward as José hoped it would.

The unintended consequence of the kick was that its momentum forced José's foot to continue its arc beyond the point of impact, pulling his entire body into an unplanned backflip. Both combatants became airborne even as their bodies rotated away from each other.

 _I hope that knocked him out_ , thought José with the world in his orbit, _but that's not likely._

Luck finally broke his way as José landed on his feet while his enemy—tumbling back-first onto a pile of cinderblocks—didn't.

José took Bigfoot's advice and ran for the mountains.

 **THE MEDICAL BUILDING**

Bigfoot was lost.

He usually avoided human habitats. Running through winding antiseptic corridors with no sun or stars to guide him, he quickly lost his sense of direction, and the protesting passenger over his shoulder did not help his concentration.

He saw a glass door backlit by the familiar glow of daylight and plowed through it. He emerged onto the third floor footbridge with no idea how he'd arrived there.

He looked over the rail at the sidewalk twenty feet below. If he had he been younger (or still a cyborg), he would have jumped.

 _This is what I most feared,_ thought Bigfoot.

"Stop!" protested Jessie, beating his back with her fists. "Let me go!"

 _Without her cooperation, she will bring us both to harm_. _There are no words I can offer her. I can only communicate with my face and my deeds._

He put beefy hands around her waist and set her gently down. She tried to pull away, but he would not allow it. Instead, he kept a firm grip on each of her arms to stop her from hitting him.

 _I must try._

He locked eyes with her and attempted a gesture which he knew to be friendly to humans.

He smiled. Beneath unkempt hair, dried blood and a bruise that threatened to swell his eye shut, Jessie saw the ramshackle face twist into an uneasy, yet oddly sincere expression. Trembling lips retreated from crooked teeth with great effort and revealed a shy smile of quiet desperation.

 _Please understand!_

Bigfoot saw Jessie's young face shift gradually from horror to incredulity, then to curiosity and the kind of sympathy reserved for lost puppies.

And back to horror.

" _ **LOOK OUT!"**_

Bigfoot turned too late to dodge Kirkland's fist. The blow sent him reeling against the handrail, then face-first into the concrete floor of the footbridge.

The assassin turned toward Jessie. An eyebrow was missing, and so was much of the hair on the right side of his head. His bionic right arm was marred by scorch marks and ruptures that exposed internal circuitry.

Jessie backed away. "Kirkland—"

"Shut up!" In a blur, he grabbed her already-bruised arm. Then he looked away toward the mountains and spoke to someone she couldn't see.

"Sir? I have Dr. Goodwin. What are your orders?"

 **ELSEWHERE . . .**

The O.S.I. director received Kirkland's message through a direct eye-to-eye transmission.

"Bring her to me," replied Spencer who was already miles away. "She can be useful." He knew his subordinate would have no trouble locating him from his GPS signal—even where he now stood on the mountain ridge.

Spencer's bionic eye tracked José whose attempt to escape at 88 miles per hour amused him. Spencer's superior bionics would allow him to overtake his quarry anytime he chose, but a part of him wondered where the boy would run.

"José is making me chase him," he informed, "but if he sees we have _**her**_ with us, he might become cooperative." Spencer picked up his improvised club—an axle he had torn off the undercarriage of the overturned Chrysler. "We're off the complex, so be discreet. No civilian witnesses."

 **THE MEDICAL BUILDING  
** **THIRD-FLOOR FOOTBRIDGE**

"Understood," confirmed Kirkland. He slung his hostage forcefully over his shoulder. "Doctor, we need to retrieve your patient—"

"No!" she protested, kicking uselessly.

"—and your cooperation is required."

Ignoring Jessie's protests, he leaped off the footbridge into the empty air.

 _To be concluded . . ._

* * *

 _ **NEXT CHAPTER:**_ _The end. . . . Whose remains to be seen._


	9. We Have the Technology

**CHAPTER NINE: WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY**

* * *

Everyone wants their first day at a new job to go well.

Doreen knew that Darkwell Defense Systems was under contract with the O.S.I., an organization reputed to be the most secretive of all the dark corners of the Department of Homeland Security. Her supervisor had warned her not to ask questions about what the company did. This had not bothered Doreen. She was not curious.

But then the "radiation leak" had happened, followed by the unplanned evacuation of the building. It was only a drill, her supervisor had told her. Then came the sound of gunfire and the strange young man who crashed through the wall into her workspace from the parking lot. He hadn't stayed long, however, being eager to jump back through the hole he'd created. This had been followed by more gunfire and shouting from outside.

Doreen hid behind her desk for twenty minutes. When she thought it was safe to reemerge, she stepped cautiously through the debris to the new gaping hole in the office wall and emerged blinkingly into the light.

"Hello?" she whispered. "Are they done fighting?"

Three security guards stopped what they were doing and pointed guns in her direction. "Freeze!" shouted the nearest one. "Don't move, or we'll shoot!"

"Oh, god! Don't hurt me!" she cried, throwing her hands up in surrender. "It's my first day!"

The guards closed ranks with each other, but did not lower their weapons. The nearest one said politely, "Ma'am, please step out of the way."

Only now did it occur to her that the weapons were not actually pointing at her. In fact, the guards positioned themselves to try to keep her out their line of fire. This confused her until she saw the sasquatch standing behind her.

 _Does he work for the government too?_ she wondered after running for her life.

Bigfoot stood squinting in the light that streamed through the opening as the three security guards stood their ground and wished they'd brought bigger guns.

The giant glared judgmentally before turning and disappearing back into the darkness.

"Where is he?" asked the guard bringing up the rear.

"We'll have to go in after him," said the nearest guard.

"Agreed," said the third guard. "You first."

 _I have failed the boy,_ thought Bigfoot in the dark. _I told him the woman was safe when she was not. I allowed the wicked man to take her._

He looked at his arm and the Velcro pouch that carried his smartphone. The device inside suffered from a cracked screen that had separated from its casing. If he had not fallen on it, he might have used it to send an electronic message to his friend.

José was on his own now.

As the men with guns stumbled through the opening, the giant cursed himself for having become old and weak. He picked up a filing cabinet with some difficulty—though it was hardly full—and threw it at the armed men, tumbling them against each other like hapless bowling pins.

 _The wicked man has a head start,_ thought Bigfoot as he leaped over the idiots and ran toward the mountains. _If I am to redeem myself, I must hurry._

 **ELSEWHERE**

Again, José felt as though he ran in slow motion. This was not a good thing.

 _Spencer's behind me._ _He's dropped back to follow at a distance, but I know he's there._

He didn't have a plan. He didn't know where he was running. He dared not return to Oscar, as much as he wanted to.

 _What would Steve Austin do?_

He jumped across a gully without slowing down.

 _I have no frickin' clue. I can't emulate a man I've never met._

He reviewed in his mind what Jessie had taught him about his bionics—their strengths and their shortcomings—hoping to remember something he could exploit to his advantage.

 _I'm vulnerable to cold—which means he is, too._

He reasoned that anything affecting his bionics would affect Spencer's superior bionics _more_ because they were more complex. More parts meant there were more pieces that could break.

 _It's true of cars, so it must be true of bionics, right?_

He had no idea but scanned the horizon for snow-capped peaks that might be within reach.

 _It's a theory I might have to—Whoa!_

He dug his heels into the earth. They plowed a long furrow in the ground which brought him to a halt on the edge of a deep gorge.

He didn't know where he was, but the view was spectacular. The gorge was at least a hundred yards wide and stretched endlessly in either direction, carved over the centuries by the churning river that flowed far, far below. He could see for miles in either direction, including the fierce thunderclouds that were blowing in from the west. Distant shadows revealed where the rain was already pouring while in other places the elusive sun cast brilliant shafts between the clouds into the valleys.

He would have taken a picture if he hadn't been in mortal danger.

 _ **KRAK!**_

The sound was that of his enemy landing on a rocky shelf roughly thirty feet behind him, slamming his feet into the stone as if he had fallen out of the sky. He carried with him an improvised club—an axle torn out of a car with a wheel attached at one end. His white ribbed tank top was an odd match for his dress slacks, but the coat and tie he'd been wearing earlier had been too cumbersome for murder.

José stood between Spencer and the chasm.

 _Stop thinking about Austin. . . ._ _What would Oscar do?_

"I have to admit," said Spencer from his vantage point above his opponent. "I thought you had a better plan than this." He gestured expansively at the panorama. "That's the Royal Gorge behind you. Twelve hundred feet down to the Arkansas River. Kind of a dead end, I'm afraid."

"I came for the view. It's fantastic," said José.

 _Oscar would study his motives. Wait for him to reveal a weakness._

"Why did you do this, José? What did you think you would gain from fighting me?"

José knew the answer but was too tired to put it into words. It would have had something to do with the right of a nation to know how far its government was willing to go for its defense—also the concentration of power, transparency in government, and other high-minded concepts that would mean nothing to his boss.

"The truth," said José out loud.

" _ **The truth?"**_ repeated the bureaucrat. "Here's the truth! I gave you your _**legs**_ back! A job! A swanky apartment! _**Money!**_ " He grasped the axle like a scepter. "Everything a man your age should want!"

"I never volunteered to be an assassin. You lied to me."

"I did what it takes to protect this country! People think that _**ISIS**_ is the worst thing out there! They don't _**know**_ about sentient viruses from outer space! Psychic foreign agents! _**Death probes!**_ Did your pal Oscar even _**mention the FEMBOTS?**_ "

The red-faced bureaucrat answered his own question with flecks of spittle.

"No, of _**course**_ he didn't! He thinks his people _**GOT**_ 'em all! _**Well, I don't have the LUXURY of being that ignorant!**_ If people knew what _**really**_ threatened America, _**they would FREAK THE HELL OUT!"**_

Spencer leapt toward his opponent, hoisting the heavy axle over his head to bring it down on his enemy's head. José leaped backward just in time.

 _ **KRUK!**_

The wheel on the end of the axle dug into the ground, bursting the tire on its rim. Spencer lifted the improvised club to swing again, trailing shredded rubber behind it.

José stepped back from Spencer's club, aware that his enemy was trying to maneuver him toward the cliff's edge.

Spencer swung again. This time, José grabbed the wheel and did not let go. The wheel came loose from the axle and propelled him into the side of a boulder near the cliff's edge.

Spencer continued to advance, gripping his axle as a fighting staff.

"You've been lying to Congress!" accused José. He lifted the wheel and threw it at Spencer's head.

" _ **Dammit!"**_ Spencer shouted, deflecting the projectile. "You sound just like Senator Feinstein!"

Spencer lunged toward him, but this time José charged in return, grabbing the staff, determined not to be herded any more. The two combatants glared at each other, their faces inches apart, neither wanting to relinquish control of the weapon.

"What _**more**_ do you _**want?"**_ screamed Spencer. " _ **I gave you the power of a GOD! ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ACT LIKE ONE!"**_

 _Wow!_ _I hit a nerve . . ._

José glanced down and saw the furrows left by his own feet as he was pushed unwillingly toward the cliff's edge.

 _My time's up_. _No time for anything smart. Have to settle for Plan Stupid._

He relaxed his knees and dropped onto his back, forcing his opponent to roll over him. Without letting go of the axle, José pushed with his feet against the ground for a little extra backward momentum.

 _Take him with me._

The two men tumbled into the chasm.

Astonishingly, even in free fall, neither man let go of the weapon. Spencer actually pulled it closer to scrutinize his opponent's face more closely. They glared at each other, realizing how far each was willing to go to defeat the other.

 _I might have a chance to test Newton's third law._

José waited for the right moment and pushed his opponent away. Spencer fell away from the cliff face as José fell toward it.

José saw the rocky surface blurring past him—and one fast-approaching outcropping that might be within reach. He extended his arm.

 _This will hurt. . . ._

His fingers made contact with the rock, leaving five parallel furrows in the cliff face behind a trail of sparks. This was immediately followed by contact with his other hand, his elbows, feet, knees, and more of his chest than he had planned. And he remembered, to his regret, that necessary sensors in his bionics were designed to register pain.

" _ **AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRHHH!"**_

He didn't know how far he slid along the cliff face, but when he finally stopped, he was thankful that his limbs were intact, although his clothes and much of the artificial skin on his limbs had been shredded.

 _I've stopped. And I'm alive. And Spencer . . ._

He looked down and saw Spencer fall, looking more angry than afraid. He raised his left palm toward José, but not to wave goodbye.

 _ **SPOF!**_

The hand detached from its arm, propelled by a burst of compressed air, and hurtled toward José who lurched aside to avoid it.

 _That son of a—!_

The hand dug itself into the rock face at José's side. A sturdy cable connected the hand to Spencer's arm. Spencer swung easily to safety on an outcropping a hundred feet below.

A cold gust of wind surprised José as he clung to the rock face. He glanced toward the sky and remembered the storm that approached. When it started to rain (as he was certain it soon would), a slippery rock face would be the worst place for him to be.

He located a narrow ledge only a few feet below. He grabbed the cable from Spencer's grappling hand and allowed himself to slide down it toward the ledge.

A glance downward confirmed his suspicion. The fight was not over. Spencer was rapidly climbing the cliff by retracting the cable back into his left arm.

José recognized a strategic advantage that wouldn't last long. He reached upward for Spencer's cable and tugged the grappling hand out of the rock face.

" _ **Hey, Spencer!"**_ he shouted, looking down at his opponent whose full weight he now supported and whose grappling device he plainly held. _**"Need a hand?"**_

He wished Jessie had been there to hear it.

Then his body seized up because Spencer used the cable to send 400 milliamps of electricity into him.

 **MILES AWAY**

"Kirkland, stop!"

Jessie had had enough of being dangled over the shoulder of a super-powered assassin who bounded from ridge to ridge like a mountain goat. "I mean it!"

He ignored her cries as well as the punches she hurled at his back, but he found it harder to ignore her clawing fingernails when they found his face.

" _ **Hey!"**_

They landed on a lonely mountain road where he dumped his hostage carelessly on the asphalt.

"What's the _**matter**_ with you?" he demanded as he checked his face for signs of bleeding.

Jessie made an attempt to stand, but could only manage to rise to her hands and knees. "I can't take all that leaping," she said staring at the pavement. "I'm gonna be sick."

"Be quick about it. We're on a schedule, and you're going to cooperate."

She did not vomit, but instead forced herself to her wobbly feet. "You don't need my cooperation," she said, rising to her full height. "You need a hostage!"

"Whose fault is that? You've betrayed your country!"

Kirkland stretched his arms expansively, feeling empowered at last to say exactly what he thought.

"You were part of the _**O.S.I.**_ —the most elite group in the world. The benefits are amazing for those of us who follow orders. You and I could've been _**friends!**_ "

"No," she said. "We could never be friends." She turned her back and hobbled away from him. "You could never see the big picture."

Her superior tone enraged him. "What does _**that**_ mean?" he demanded, following her. " _ **What**_ is it that I don't see?"

 _Oncoming traffic,_ she might have said as she turned around, but instead she watched the van hit him.

Kirkland tried to leap out of the way, but recognized the danger too late. He cleared the grill only to strike the windshield, leaving behind an impact crater of cracked glass as he cartwheeled over the roof.

The driver hit the brakes only after the collision, causing the vehicle to momentarily skid out of control, swerving across the road and onto the opposite shoulder near the rock wall. It came to a rest after hitting a traffic sign, nudging it askew.

Before Kirkland hit the pavement, Jessie was already running toward the vehicle.

The driver nudged the door open. He was unhurt.

"Help!" she called, knowing the driver was now in as much danger as she. "We have to get out of here!"

But Kirkland grabbed her by the coat and pulled her toward him. His red face was a twisted knot of rage.

" _ **I've HAD it with you!"**_

 **THE ROYAL GORGE**

 _That hurt,_ thought José as his mind pushed its way back toward consciousness. _My bionics insulated me from the worst of the shock . . . but if that hand had dug into my body . . ._

He was on a high ledge against a cliff face, he remembered. He felt the wind upon his skin and an urgency that came from knowing he was not alone.

 _I should open my eyes._

He did and beheld the windblown face of his employer, Eli Spencer, leaning over him. Spencer's left hand (the one with the grappling function) was anchored into the rock wall over José's head, ensuring that the cyborg could not be easily dislodged from the narrow ledge that held them both over the chasm. The sky had grown dark and heavy with the incoming storm.

"This adventure has been very instructive," said Spencer. "It's not often I get a chance to test the limits of an agent's bionics this way." He lifted José's limp left arm to study it. The false skin on the forearm had been shredded, and some of the electronics within had been exposed to the elements. "I never knew what your tolerances truly were. Thank you for that."

Spencer held up his right hand, palm out. Two-inch blades extended from the fingertips while longer blades extended from the edges of his hand, radiating outward from the wrist.

"I see your arm is damaged," he observed.

The hand began to spin in an unnatural way. José remembered archival footage Oscar had shown of a robot with a buzz saw for a hand. This was the same technology as seen close up.

"It'll have to go back to the shop," diagnosed Spencer who jabbed the rotating blades deep into José's bicep.

Pain erupted. Sparks flashed. Reflexively, José pounded his attacker's face with his good right hand.

Spencer was taken off guard—surprised that José had any strength left—and listed sideways. He could not fall because of the grappling arm, but the cyborg was greatly annoyed.

José sprang to his feet but felt something wrong with his left arm. The fingers twitched intermittently and no longer responded to his will.

He ignored the problem. Spotting an outcropping of rock twenty feet away, he leapt for it to put distance between himself and his attacker. As he jumped, a small cylinder fell out of a cavity in his damaged arm. His bionic eye caught a glimpse of it as it dropped away toward the river where it would never be found.

 _My atomic battery . . ._

 **ELSEWHERE**

Kirkland held her close, making certain she saw his anger when he said, "The next time you run, doctor, I break your ankles."

He approached the van and its driver, tugging Jessie behind him. "But there's something I have to do before we go," he said, remembering his last order.

"No civilian witnesses."

Jessie was horrified when she realized what was about to happen. It was too late to warn the driver. There was nothing she could do.

The driver, an elderly gentleman in a coat and tie, was standing outside his vehicle. He was unhurt and unafraid. He took something out of his coat.

Kirkland recognized the face of Oscar Goldman, the man targeted for elimination. Kirkland's bionic eye zoomed quickly to the weapon in Goldman's upraised hand.

 _ **BLAM!**_

The final image recorded by Kirkland's eye was an extreme close-up of a muzzle flare, captured an instant before the eye was shattered by a bullet on its way into his brain.

Jessie flinched. Blood spattered her white coat. Some got in her hair.

Her captor collapsed face up. No training was needed to see that he would never get up again.

She turned to the stranger with the gun—which thankfully was now pointed unthreateningly at the ground. The gentleman seemed to be in a hurry.

"Who are you?"

"Your best friend. Get in the van."

 **THE GORGE**

Spencer watched José with amusement. The boy seemed desperate to ascend to the top of the cliff, frantically leaping from one outcropping to the next as his damaged left arm flopped uselessly in the wind, hindering all his efforts.

Near the top, José looked back once and saw Spencer staring up at him. With bionic vision, the adversaries might as well have been standing next to each other.

Then the boy turned away and leaped upward, disappearing from Spencer's view over the top edge of the cliff.

Spencer admired the boy's determination—annoying as it was. The O.S.I. director leaped to the top of the gorge and landed on its edge.

He did not immediately see his quarry. The top of the gorge had grown dark as storm clouds crowded the sky.

" _ **José!"**_ he screamed over the wind. _**"You can't hide from me!"**_

 _ **Snap!**_

It was the sound of a thick branch being torn loose with bionic strength.

He turned toward the only tree in the vicinity, one which happened to overlook the gorge. It was small, dead and brittle, like its occupant was soon to be.

José was on its only remaining limb about ten feet up, facing Spencer, brandishing the branch like a club. He held the weapon with one hand—which only betrayed the severity of the injury to his other arm.

Spencer asked, "Why don't you just surrender?"

"Why don't you just _**shut up?**_ " demanded José. "By now, you should have killed me—a _**LOT—**_ but you keep making so _**damn many SPEECHES!**_ "

José needed his opponent angry for his plan to work.

"Hiding in a tree is a bad strategy, soldier!" taunted Spencer. "You know I can push it down. Or cut it with my hand."

"And miss this view?" He gestured with his club toward the vista. "Fly up here and look for yourself! You can _**fly**_ , can't you?" He swung his club like a propeller. "Go, go, gadget 'copter?"

Spencer snarled, firing his grappling hand at José's head.

 **SPOF!**

 _Good,_ thought José as he blocked the projectile with his club. The grappling device latched onto the detached tree limb with all five of its fingers.

He leaped at his attacker, raising his one-handed club over his head as if it were the legendary Norse hammer.

 _This time I won't touch the hand._

Spencer calmly stepped back a couple paces and watched José land on the spot where he had been. The grappling hand was still attached to the club as José landed.

 _I remember something else Jessie told me about my prosthetics._

José looked at the pile of slack cable on the ground which still connected the grappling hand to Spencer's arm. Then he looked at the cloud-filled sky.

 _Bionics attract lightning._

José hurled the club with the attached hand into the sky, trailing conductive taser cable beneath it.

The sky, heavy with negatively charged water particles, looked down to see an unexpected lightning rod and released its static electric burden with ear-splitting candor.

 _ **KRAkkkK-KOWWW!**_

José raised his hand to shield his eyes, but the spectacle was already over. Spencer flinched backward—the result of a system-wide overload in his bionics—which created the illusion that he'd been struck in the chest with a cannonball. He somersaulted twice before landing face-down in the dirt.

José waited. He watched the first wisps of smoke rise, but still waited to see if the smoldering ruins of the cyborg would move again.

They did. Spencer slowly propped himself up on an elbow to look at his enemy. It was obvious now that the skin on his face was fake because real skin wouldn't bubble and ooze as his face now did. Just enough of his old face remained to convey how angry he was.

" _ **You stupid PUNK! You think a little LIGHTNING is enough to stop me?"**_

"Nope," said José and kicked his boss into the gorge.

José's perfect kick sent the cyborg hurtling in a wide parabola that would eventually deposit him far below in the Arkansas River. The grappling hand followed on a slightly different trajectory, and when it reached the end of its tether, the super-heated, suddenly brittle cable snapped, allowing the hand to find its own path downward.

José watched from the edge of the chasm.

 _Twelve hundred feet, he said. According to everything I know, that fall should kill him._

 _My gut tells me it probably won't._

 _Still, it'll take him a long time to climb out of a hole that deep._

 _I think I've earned a little rest._

José collapsed on the edge even as Spencer continued to fall. He felt the first drop of rain hit his face. _About time,_ he thought.

Soon it was a downpour, but José did not care, notice, or move.

This was the scene that Bigfoot discovered as he loped over the horizon, desperate to find his friend before rain washed away the trail. The youth he discovered at the cliff's edge appeared lifeless. His face was caked with blood, his left arm was mangled, and his clothes were shredded from the violent descent down a rocky cliff.

He knew it was unsafe to remain in this place while others from the O.S.I. still searched for them. With infinite care, he lifted his young friend in gentle arms.

To his great relief the boy stirred.

"Who's that?"

The boy opened his eyes and recognized his friend.

"Oh, it's you," said the youth. "You look like _**hell.**_ What happened?"

 **A FEW MINUTES LATER**

The pouring rain made it difficult for Oscar to navigate the Dodge Sprinter van through the mountain pass, but luckily the cracks in the windshield were confined to the passenger side, and the windshield wipers still functioned as they should.

Jessie hadn't stopped talking since they'd gotten to the main road. Oscar had identified himself as a friend of April's—which had been the only credential he could claim that would put the young doctor at ease. Jessie had guessed the rest and started telling him her side of the adventure.

"It was some kind of monster," she said with broad gestures. "It was shaggy. It growled, and it picked me up and—" She pointed at something moving on the road. _**"—and there it IS!"**_

Oscar hit the brakes harder than he'd intended, going into a momentary skid. The van stopped just in time.

Illuminated solely by the van's headlights, Bigfoot stood like a statue holding his young friend in his arms, his expression one of dread. José's head and arms drooped lazily in Bigfoot's grasp. Both figures were battle-scarred and drenched with rain.

"That's no monster," Oscar declared. "That's a friend."

 **THE ARKANSAS RIVER**  
 **DOWNSTREAM**

Eli Spencer awoke with wet gravel in his mouth. He was face down in the rain on the river's edge and couldn't remember quite how he'd gotten there.

He remembered the fall into the gorge. Before landing, there had been a moment of optimism when he realized his feet would land first, but then he struck the riverbed and his legs snapped at both knees.

Now, with difficulty, he twisted his head sideways to get his bearings. He knew he couldn't stand. His feet were upstream somewhere, but maybe he could see some clue as to where he was.

The cliffs were not as high here, nor as steep. Someone dressed in black at the top of the cliff saw him and jumped down into the gorge, landing like a grasshopper. He ran to Spencer's side faster than an ordinary man could. He looked up and shouted, "Here!"

Within moments, three more men in black landed as if they'd been dropped by the sky.

Spencer's bionic army had arrived too late, but they'd arrived.

"You'll be all right, sir," said the nearest agent. "Dr. Endo will have you fixed up in no time."

"Status report?" gasped Spencer.

"We're searching the area for Agent Mendez and Dr. Goodwin."

"Goodwin? What happened to Kirkland?"

The agent briefly looked away—as subordinates sometimes do before delivering bad news.

"Sorry, sir."

 **WESTBOUND I-70**  
 **SIXTY MILES WEST OF DENVER**

The driving rain continued, as did the unmarked van with the cracked windshield. Oscar was alone at the wheel now and was starting to relax despite the rain. If anyone were going to stop them, they likely would have done it by now.

He took a call on his flip phone.

"Oscar," said the caller. "It's me, Nick. How's the kid doing?"

"He was hurt pretty bad, but I think he'll live," reported Oscar. "We got him to a good doctor."

Behind him, Jessie tended to José in the van's rear cabin which had been hastily rearranged into a makeshift trauma center. The surveillance equipment had been pushed aside and switched off, and the backseat had been turned lengthwise to serve as a gurney for Jessie's patient. She kneeled at his side and applied bandages from Oscar's first aid kit which had been presciently stocked for combat medicine. Bigfoot crouched and cradled José's head in his massive hands.

"You're going to be all right, José," promised the doctor. "Just relax."

"I beat him, Jessie," said the patient dreamily. "Did Bigfoot tell you how I beat him?"

Jessie smiled reassuringly, knowing her patient was experiencing a morphine-induced euphoria.

José answered his own question. "My speech was shorter."

Jessie smiled, but remained concerned. She didn't want to say it while her patient was awake, but he needed more help than she could give him.

In the front cabin, Oscar steered with one hand while listening to Nick on his phone.

"Don't know if this is a good time, Oscar, but you said you wanted to know right away if I found something. You were right. The O.S.I. is searching, and they're looking all over the world—except they're not looking for some _ **thing**_. It's some _ **one**_." Oscar heard keystrokes on the other end as Nick called up a picture of the hunted man. "A retired air force colonel by the name of Steve Austin."

"What?!"

"It seems like they were tracking him for a while, but he must've given them the slip. Wasn't he an astronaut or something?"

Oscar almost dropped the phone in astonishment.

"He's _**alive.**_ . . . My god, he's _**still alive. . . ."**_

 _ **FROM THE EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE**_ _ **OF DR. RICHARD ENDO:**_

 _Mr. Spencer:_

 _Attached is the autopsy report on Agent Kirkland. I'm afraid it isn't conclusive._

 _The data stream from his bionic eye documented some kind of accident in our lab. We found first and second degree burns on his face and scalp, and some scorching on his bionic arm. His eye stopped transmitting shortly after he left the base, and ruptures in his artificial skin suggest he was struck by a car. There were indistinct skid marks on the scene where his body was discovered, but most of the marks were washed away by the rain, making it impossible to identify the tread._

 _Even more frustrating, the data stored in Kirkland's bionic eye is unrecoverable. The bionic implant was destroyed by the bullet that killed him._

 _Mr. Paulson has been very thorough in overhauling our security. Passwords have been changed and protocols have been tightened to prevent further breaches. Paulson is filing his own report to you, but he tells me that we were victims of a well-organized conspiracy that included Agent Mendez, Dr. Goodwin, and a large, powerful man in a Bigfoot costume._

 _Paulson doesn't want to admit it, but this smells like Goldman's work._

 **ON THE ROAD . . .**

José recovered on the journey—except for his left arm which remained in a sling.

Oscar drove west. He and his passengers spent nights at campsites well off the main roads, stopping along the way for essentials like food, gas, medicinal supplies, tools for repairing fine circuitry, and one tent big enough for a sasquatch.

They couldn't use their credit cards for the same reason they couldn't go home, but Oscar had been astonishingly well prepared with cash for their needs, prompting José and Jessie to wonder how long he'd been planning for this unplanned trip.

Although the four were all now friends, they were also strangers thrown together by circumstance, so many of their more relaxed moments on the road were spent learning about each other, especially Bigfoot. His smartphone had been repaired by Jessie with a combination of solder and duct tape, so the sasquatch was able to use it to share stories about his past on earth and in space. The trip was not long enough for him to answer all of their questions.

There was never a discussion about _where_ they were driving, however. Bigfoot had invited them to return to the safest place he knew, and upon reaching the San Angelo Mountains, he led them through the White Tunnel himself. Jessie took a bit longer than the others to take in the sight because it was her first visit to the sanctuary with its unearthly glowing entrance.

When they reached Shalon's examination room, Bigfoot disappeared for a while to confer with the other sasquatches. José resumed his normal daily routine by submitting to a diagnostic session with Jessie—a ritual he missed more than he wanted to admit. It was only then that he brought up the subject they had all been avoiding.

"Are you ready to stop telling me that I'm all right?" he hinted.

"He knows," Oscar concluded.

"About his missing nuclear battery?" asked Jessie. "Of course, he knows. I've been avoiding the subject to keep his mind off of it."

"This was part of my training," said José grimly. He looked at his bandaged left arm in the sling, knowing that the bandages hid an empty battery chamber in his bionics. "To stay alive, I need an atomic battery for each of my bionic limbs." He pulled the sling off the damaged arm so the doctor could help him remove the bandages. "If this one isn't replaced soon, I'll die of organ failure."

"We don't _**know**_ that, José," she said with stubborn optimism. She located the battery connectors inside the damaged arm with needle-nosed pliers and carefully pulled them into the light, being sure to leave the connecting wires attached.

"An off-the-shelf battery won't do," said José. "My bionic arm pulls a lot more amps than a pacemaker."

"That doesn't mean we're giving up," insisted Jessie. She connected her smartphone to his arm using a small cable and launched a diagnostic app she had written for this purpose. "We can rotate the batteries in your remaining limbs to extend your time—until I figure out something else."

"Jessie . . . ," prompted Oscar from the doorway. Jessie recognized the discretion in his voice and nodded.

Bigfoot entered the examination room as Jessie set down her smartphone and left for a few moments to speak with Oscar.

"Can the arm be removed?" asked Oscar in a whisper. His decades of experience with bionics left him with little doubt that the missing battery problem was far graver than she had yet revealed.

Jessie peeked through the doorway at José who waited without complaint on the exam table. She saw Bigfoot curiously poking the empty battery chamber with his finger.

Jessie whispered to Oscar, "It's a major surgery. I don't have the tools or the training."

"What if we cut it off?"

"The sensors in his arms are powered organically—by his body." She shook her head. "He'd feel the pain."

"I can hear you talking, you know," reminded José.

Their hushed fretting over him convinced him that he should take charge. He would have stood dramatically at this point if Bigfoot were not still examining the wires in his arm.

"I don't want this to be awkward," he continued. "It's been a long drive since Colorado, and I've had time to think about how I want to use this time I have left." He reached for his sling to demonstrate his readiness. "I want to start the next mission."

"Mission?" asked Oscar.

"You know," said José. "Finding Steve Austin. You're going to go look for him, right?"

"Now just a minute . . ."

"You need to conserve your strength," warned Jessie.

"No, I need to kick some ass," her patient insisted.

Before an argument could begin, Jessie's phone made an unaccustomed noise where it lay on the table—still connected to José's arm.

 _ **BOOP-BOOP-BOOP!**_

"My diagnostic app." Jessie picked up her phone.

"Hey, guys?" said José as he watched his suddenly reanimated bionic limb. "My arm just came back to life!" His eyes widened in surprise at the flexing fingers of his left hand which now responded to his will, but none of the humans in the room seemed to understand how this was possible.

"Bigfoot? What did you _**do?**_ "

The giant was surprised that the others were staring at him. José's battery connectors were concealed in Bigfoot's closed fist, and the connecting wires were still visible leading from the fist to the damaged arm.

The giant looked embarrassed. He opened his fist and revealed a metal cylinder attached to the wires.

"Mergeron," said José. "Bigfoot just texted me. He says it's a mergeron cell."

Oscar scoffed, "But that's—"

"An antimatter power cell," finished José who, like the others, stared at the giant in utter confusion. "Bigfoot used to use these 'mergeron' cells to power his own cybernetic parts, but he says he doesn't need them anymore."

Amidst the gathering of open mouths, Bigfoot conscientiously tucked the miraculous power source into the open cavity in José's arm.

"Bigfoot hasn't been a cyborg since the aliens left," said Jessie. "Are you saying that there's more of that tech here on earth?"

"That's impossible," said Oscar. "The aliens took it all."

Bigfoot stared guiltily at the floor as if he'd been caught in a giant fib.

 _I should have said the colonists_ _THOUGHT_ _they took it all,_ he thought.

The sasquatch signaled the others to follow him as he left the examination room and walked toward the deeper caves.

 _Because of Shalon's illness_ , _she was asleep—frozen in time—when the Colonists left, so the others collected her things while she slept. The other Colonists did not know about the Safe Room, and she made me promise never to tell._

He had never forgotten what Shalon, his human mother, had told him in the privacy of the Safe Room when tensions within the colony had threatened to tear it apart:

"I created this secret room, even though Apploy would never approve if he knew. You and I are the only ones who know about this place, and it has everything I need to take care of the both of us—in case things get worse."

Bigfoot walked slowly so that Oscar could keep up. He touched what appeared to be a rocky protrusion on a cave wall, but which was actually a centuries-old palm scanner designed by Shalon to recognize his touch. A metal door appeared and slid open.

 _I have kept this secret for a long time_. _Forgive me, Mother, but this is no longer the time for secrets._

The room was similar to the examination room in the upper caves, but instead of being furnished with second-hand chairs and old boxes, it was fully equipped with extraordinary technology from another world. Crates of unknown circuitry stocked the shelves, and one wall was adorned with a hexagonal view screen that had been dark for decades.

"This . . . ," Jessie stammered as she entered the room. "This is amazing."

"Bigfoot says he doesn't know how it all works, but you can figure it out." José's eye received a new text message that made him smile. "Bigfoot says, 'Jessie is smart.'"

Jessie looked at Bigfoot, then at José, and felt suddenly overwhelmed. "This stuff is alien. _**If**_ I can figure it out—and that's a very big 'if'—it would change the world."

"You'll do it. You'll figure it all out," José assured her. "This can be _**your**_ mission—while _**I'm**_ out looking for Steve Austin."

He turned toward his new boss. "What do you think, Oscar? Can we do it?"

The former head of the O.S.I. gazed incredulously at the gadgets in the room. "Oh, yes. . . . Of course, we can." His mouth widened into a very broad grin.

"We have the technology. . . ."

 **DARKWELL MEDICAL FACILITY  
** **COLORADO**

Eli Spencer and Dr. Endo walked side-by-side toward the patient's recovery room. Spencer walked with some difficulty, using a cane for support (as his father once had). The damaged bionics had been recently replaced, but there was always a recovery period when the brain had to relearn how to control its new parts.

Amber—whom Endo had recently chosen to be his new personal assistant—nodded politely at her superiors as they walked past, but did not interrupt their private conversation.

"And how's the patient?" Spencer asked the doctor.

"Awake. After he's had a few more days to recover, I can introduce you to—"

"Now. I'll talk to him now."

"Sir?"

"I need to replace two bionic agents. We need to step up the pace."

"Very well, sir."

Amber lingered in the hallway as Spencer and Endo entered the patient's room. Eavesdropping had been such a rewarding habit for her in the past, she wasn't going to stop now.

"Good morning, soldier," said the man with the cane. "I'm Eli Spencer, director of the O.S.I. You probably have some questions about how you came to be here."

Amber could not see the patient through the open door, but she could hear a voice.

"Was I in an accident?"

"Yes," explained Spencer. "We rebuilt you. We had the technology. We had the capability to make the world's first bionic man."

The door slowly closed.

"You, Marcus Koehler, are that man."

 _The end . . ._

* * *

 _ **FROM THE AUTHOR:**_

 _Yes, it IS weird to have "The end" at the bottom of a chapter like that, and the dot-dot-dot that follows is significant. A question mark would have been silly._

 _What began as a thought experiment for my amusement grew into the story you've just read—something that consumed a lot of my time because my nature demands closure. These characters took on a life of their own and demanded that I continue to write until I reached some kind of conclusion._

 _Posting this project online was another experiment—to see if there's an audience for a story like this. The results are inconclusive. Compared to the_ _Buffy_ _and_ _Doctor Who_ _sections, the_ _Six Million Dollar Man_ _corner of this site gets very little attention, and the total hits have been few. This may change when Hollywood remakes the franchise—and it WILL, sooner than you think, and Matt Damon will apparently be involved—but for now, it's hard to tell._

 _I have reasons for optimism, however. The traffic data for this story suggest that those who DO see my work seem to stick with it for a while. Thank you very much._

 _You may be wondering: What's Callahan up to? Why does everyone think Steve and Jaime are dead? How did Rudy Wells die? What's the deal with Amber? I intended this story to be a launching point for a longer series, but until I find a publisher for stories like these that include these very licensed characters, I have to find a way to put a concluding period at the end of it (or perhaps three in a row) so that I can move on to other things._

 _If you enjoyed this story, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please write a review or send me an email. You have the technology._


End file.
